


Crisis of Faith

by SharpestRose



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:51:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 44,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faith was doing an almost flawless impersonation of Faith, Lindsey thought to himself as he followed her down a short flight of stairs. If he didn't know better, he'd swear she was still the swaggering, lawless, conscience-free girl that Sunnydale knew her as.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Exhaustion is like a heavy, comfortable blanket, at least when the exhausted party is in a position to appreciate the iron-heavy lethargy in limbs and mind. When on a mountain hike, or struggling to stay awake after an accident, exhaustion can be life-threatening and not very much at all like a comfortable blanket. But when the exhausted person is situated in a little room with a little bed and a little pillow, the feeling of total utter tiredness is nice. 

Peaceful. 

When she'd first woken up, she'd hated the feeling of lead in her bones. Her body had gotten quite enough rest, thank you very much. Now, she was beginning to understand it. She'd been pushing her body for so long, even in forced unconsciousness she'd played the same terrible games with herself, lying and pushing and trying to convince her mind that this was who she really was. Down time was gonna be needed to fix up all the little white lies - and not-so-white lies - that she'd told herself. Good thing she had a whole bunch of mandatory down time ahead of her. 

Angel had brought her a walkman and some tapes he'd found in her bag, Faith got the feeling that it wasn't the kind of thing she was allowed in here. But the girl cop, Faith knew that she should use the word woman but found it hard to take pretty blonde law enforcers seriously, wasn't the tough-as-nails bitch she was supposed to be. Trying to be. Faith knew that when people wear masks that don't fit, they always slip in the end. 

Nine inch nails. That would do. Fragile was certainly a word that Faith could relate to at this point. She felt as if her bones would break if she moved anywhere too fast. She'd traded her Filter tape for a coke on the way to LA, which was too bad. Something upbeat and bouncy might make her feel less like a lump of very worn out granite. It had been a coke worthy of its price, though. Bright red wax paper cup with the white wavy ribbon down the side. Ice cubes rattling against the plastic lid, candy-red straw poking up the top with a little smear of Faith's dark lipstick around the rim. God, she'd kill for a coke. 

No. Not kill. She wouldn't kill for anything. 

Laying down on the matress, headphones still in place, Faith closed her eyes and tried to sleep. 

"Hey, you awake in there?" 

Of course her company would be required at the exact second she'd begun to dream about something other then being stabbed or stabbing someone. It had been a nice dream, actually. Hearts and flowers and a little babbling brook with silver fish in it. And a guy with cheese, that part made Faith decide to lay off the music before bedtime. Groggily, she sat up, scratching her hairline and pulling the now-dead earphones off. 

"Yeah, Mom, I'm up and I'll leave for cheerleading practise soon as I've had my daily stairmaster time." Faith said, yawning and covering her mouth as she did so. The girl cop, Kate, rolled her eyes. 

"You've got a visitor." 

Faith looked over, expecting to see Angel or maybe even Buffy. The former had tried to come see her every few days, as if she could actually damage herself in a room that didn't even have breakable glass. The latter had telephoned twice, the first time awkward and depressing for both of them, the second an almost surreal half-hour, the pair of them acting like nothing bad had ever happened between them, the easy fun they'd once shared back on the surface. Faith had gotten off the phone that time feeling happier then she had in God knew how long. When she saw who it actually was, Faith climbed off the bed and backed away a little further into her cell. 

"I don't wanna see him." 

"I know how you feel." Kate agreed. "But it's my duty to make sure you and your lawyer have talks before the hearing." 

"He's not my lawyer." Faith shook her head emphatically. "Don't let him in here. If you let him in here he'll kill me." 

"I'm not going to hurt you, Faith." Lindsey assured her. The expression he got in reply was about as far from trustful as you can go without getting a connecting train. 

"Ok, sure. You're not going to hurt me, and maybe later I'll go sunbaking with Angel." That comment got an amused snort out of Kate. Faith would have smiled, if she hadn't been so afraid. She turned to the police officer. "Please don't leave me alone with him." 

"I had no intention of doing such a thing." Kate folded her arms across her chest. "I'm staying right here." 

"That's police intimidation. How can she speak freely with you present?" Lindsey argued. Kate gave him a look of total contempt. 

"How can she speak freely when she fears for her life? The woman's confessed for crying out loud. How much of a case do you really think you're going to make." 

Faith tuned out of the rising argument the two in the doorway were engaged in. Woman. Again, she thought girl was a term she'd feel more comfortable with. Maybe while she'd been asleep for eight frigging months, the world had decided she wasn't a kid anymore. But she sure as hell didn't feel like a goddamn woman. 

When her thoughts wandered back into the now Faith realised Kate had stormed off angrily. She knew the feeling. You try and do the thing you think is right and all this stuff gets in the way and drives you nuts until you just don't give a damn. Lindsey had probably shoved so many legal rules down her throat that exasperation had overriden any concern for Faith's wellbeing. More likely, there hadn't been any concern in the first place. 

"So how are we gonna do this? Poison? Strangulation….oh wait, I guess that one's out." Faith couldn't resist a comment about Lindsey's missing hand. "I've always kinda hoped I'd be executed with a gun to the temple. No stabbing, if I can just make a request, because the stains are hell to get out." Faith figured if she was gonna go, she might as well go wisecracking. 

"I'm not here to kill you." Lindsey repeated. Faith looked more confused then unconvinced this time. 

"Ok, so why are you here? I'd have thought you guys were chomping at the bit to get the money I took back." 

"That amount wasn't even enough to show up on the accounts." That got a double raised eyebrow from Faith. How much money did these lawyers have? Whoa. 

"Ok, still not seeing the part where you drop by to give me a housewarming in my new little home here. Like what I've done with the door? Iron bars are all the rage in Paris this year, or so I hear. Paris is the fashionable place, right? Or is that London?" 

"Both are considered fashionable, although I'm partial to New York myself. I told you, I'm here as your lawyer." 

Faith sat down on the floor. Furniture had always kind of bugged her, to be honest. "I don't have any money. I owe you money, you know I don't have squat. Plus, like the lady said, I've confessed. I didn't realise I even got a trial." 

Lindsey surprised her then by joining her where she sat on the floor, opening the briefcase she hadn't even noticed he was holding. That had happened to her once before, when she hadn't even realised Buffy was holding a stake as they'd walked through the graveyard on patrol. Some thigs are just so expected they don't even register. Slayer, stake. Lawyer, briefcase. There was a manilla folder inside, which he now opened. 

"You confessed to one accidental stabbing of the deputy mayor of Sunnydale, California." 

"And a whole bunch of other stuff." Faith prompted. Lindsey shook his head. 

"That's it. The other crimes you claimed to have commited have already been solved." 

"What? Oh, excuse me, that was rude. What?" Faith shook her head. She noticed for the first time that she'd managed to keep what little stuff there was in the room organised. Usually, she was kind of messy. Perhaps the new Faith she was trying to be had a better sense of tidyness. 

"Solved. Attributed to the mayor of Sunnydale, now deceased, and a mysterious person named Mr Trick who gone missing." Lindsey couldn't keep the twitch of a smile from pulling at the corner of his mouth. Faith looked amazed for a moment, then her face feel back into nonchalant not-caring. 

"You guys did that." 

"Wolfram and Hart do what they can to make their clients satisfied." 

"Quit it with the lawyer talk. I'm not your client, I can't pay you a red cent, or any other color money for that matter. I don't know how you did it, although I'm a little curious, but my main question is why?" 

Lindsey was quiet for a beat, looking at Faith's face. She'd given up on the dark makeup, she couldn't put it on right anymore. It just made her look bruised. Without it, she looked younger, her facial expressions more readable, even with her constant attempt to look uninterested. With little to fill her time with, she was washing her hair more often. That was good, he would have suggested those steps anyway. 

"Everybody's got reasons. Not everybody wants to hear reasons, but everybody's got them." The reply seemed to satisfy Faith. After her own quiet moment she nodded. "So what do you want from me? What do I have to do in return? Because I can't really offer much at this stage." Her eyes roamed to the grille on the door and then dropped down to the small triangle of flesh visible above the collar of her shirt. Lindsey didn't say anything. He knew she had more to say. 

"I want to get out of here." 

That was his cue. With a nod, he leafed through the papers, looking at the neatly typed pages efficiently. Faith's cheeks colored a little with shame at her misjudgment of the situation. When she didn't speak, Lindsey looked back up. 

"Why?" 

Faith smiled a little at that. Winning power games was something she'd kept her knack for. Even the Wolfram and Hart troupe were no match for her skill in that. "Everybody's got reasons. I think if I'm going to spill, you're going to return the favor." 

Lindsey smiled at that, Faith masked her surprise at the honesty in the expression. It wasn't just an acknowledgement of her impressive manipulative skills, it was a look of genuine amusement. Closing the folder again, he leant back a little, still seated on the floor. 

"Ok, deal." 

Faith drew a ragged breath, resting her chin on her hand, elbow on her knee. 

"I'm not atoning here. I want to feel like I've made up for what I did, not that I'm being punished for it. Plus, it's only a matter of time before the Watcher's Council wastes my sorry jailbird ass." 

The lawyer scratched the skin just above his right eyebrow, looking at her as if seeing her for the first time. 

"You really are little miss born-again now, aren't you?" 

Faith shook her head. "The Lord's nobody's shepherd. I had to find my own path back. Just took me a little longer then most people. Now please recount to me the no doubt interesting and fun-filled story of why the super-evil lawyer I double-crossed and who turned me into the police is now offering to get me out free of charge." The sarcasm in her voice could have cut through the metal bars on the window. 

Lindsey's voice was clipped, no cold but simply stating facts. "I couldn't forget what had happened to you. You struck me as a person who knew the real deal about life. Seemed sad to have a kindred spirit languishing away because of Angel. He has this annoying habit of winning all the time." 

Faith stood up, shaking her head. "See, I knew this was a joke. I don't know what you expect from me, but I'm no kindred spirit of yours. I'm leaving that behind, don't you get it? I'm not going to be your hired gun. And I'm not going to be a pawn in some stupid game you and Angel are playing. Get out and leave me alone, I'm real busy here." She walked over to the bed, picking up the discarded cassette player and putting the volume on high. Lindsey scribbled something on the front of his folder and stood, leaving the cell. Faith kept her back turned to him, not wanting her expression visible. She was a soldier, and soldier's don't cry. Specially Spartan ones. There had been a book about Greece in the apartment she'd borrowed, and Faith had taken great relish in reading about the strong fighters she'd once been compared to. 

When Lindsey had walked away, Faith let her shoulders slump. So much for that. Half her brain was furious at her, the old half, the half that knew the real deal, like the lawyer had put it. That half was giving her new side a tearing-down. 

*You'd have slept with him in the blink of an eye to get out of here, but you're too dammed moral to take help if it's for the wrong reasons? Whether the police think you're a serial killer or not, you know the truth. You're dirty, Faith. You don't even deserve the help he offered.* 

But the other part of her, the part she was gingerly getting to know better, was proud. She'd been strong enough not to take the easy way out, to hold up her values even when it meant staying here. Her heart sank when she turned to see the beige cardboard folder on the floor, scrawly handwriting across the front. 

Read this, I'll be back tomorrow afternoon. 

~~~~~ 

Apart from her music, the other main distraction to while away the days with was her notebook. Faith didn't write stories in it, or a diary. Those were things that would require her to think beyond the moment-to-moment existence that was keeping her from insanity. Diaries needed a future, and she had none, fiction needed experience, and there was none Faith cared to draw from. So she scribbled song lyrics as she listened to the albums that she hadn't swapped for food along the line, sketched silly things like fairy princesses and bumblebees, and sometimes just tapped the paper with the end of her biro as a way to mark the seconds passing slowly. It was resting neatly next to her case folder on the floor at the end of her bed. It was the natural place she stored important things, easy to grab when a quick getaway was needed (fat chance of one of those in here) and out of the way for day to day living. 

The afternoon was a little chilly, so she had her blanket draped around her shoulders when Lindsey arrived. There were shadows under her eyes, he looked as infuriatingly slick as ever. Faith attempted a scowl but it fell apart before leaving ground control. 

"I thought I made it pretty clear I didn't want you to come back." 

"It's pretty clear you expected me back." Lindsey countered. This was true, Faith had been waiting for a good three quarters of an hour. It was boring, but less boring then killing time with no expected breaks in the monotony. "Are you willing to follow the game plan outlined in my notes?" 

"Oh, is this a game? I thought me being in jail was pretty much reality. My bad." Faith shot off the comment for the sake of wisecracking before letting her tone return to annoyance. "Sure, why not? I can play good little girl as well as the next homicidal maniac. I go in, I squeeze a few tears out, promise to never ever hurt anybody ever again. They let me go, poor widdle Faithy waify, such an unhappy bubbie." 

Lindsey nodded, obviously pleased with her agreement, sarcastic as it had been. Faith's mouth opened again, words faltering before they got out, her voice catching. Lindsey cocked his head, quizzical. 

"What's wrong?" he sat down in the straight-backed chair against the wall opposite Faith's bed. She looked uncomfortable. 

"How did you know about all that stuff in my file? The doctors promised my Mom they'd never tell anybody, and I didn't know anybody even knew that stuff that happened after I ran away." Without the kohl encircling her dark eyes, the liquid pain there was so… naked. Faith had never thought much of vunerability, and now vunerability was overjoyed at the chance to hold full dominion over her face. 

Lindsey didn't understand her for a moment. The file he'd included for Faith to read had been one created for another client, one that hadn't ended up needing it, due, as was becoming far too common for Wolfram and Hart, Angel Investigations. The childhood outlined there was a harrowing tale of parental neglect, suggestions of repressed abuse, and a traumatic, violent mugging in adolescence. Lindsey had been afraid it was laying it on a little too thick, even for the human blobs he usually ended up scamming onto the jury. 

Then it clicked. 

"It was my right arm, when I was seven. Your file says it was my left." Faith's voice was soft, her eyes looking anywhere but at her lawyer's face. Lindsey didn't know if he could breathe, much less say anything at that moment. 

"How did you survive?" he managed finally, his own voice hoarse. She looked up at that. 

"I've got this birthright, y'see?" she knew that he knew all about it, but the wisecracks weren't something she could just stop doing all of a sudden. "Kinda comes in handy when a couple of thugs have just beaten you up and stolen your bag - not that I had much in there. Somebody coming out of the shadows and telling you you're the one girl - well, one of two girls - in all the world who can be the Slayer. My first words to my first Watcher were 'Couldn't you have Called me twenty minutes ago?'" Faith's mouth tugged up in a bittersweet smile as she remembered the woman. "And anyway, first time we met you told me you didn't care about my personal stuff?" 

Lindsey cast his mind to the 'personal stuff' his law firm had known about Faith, pre-file editing. Her mother's drinking and subsequent suicide, which now seemed likely to be an act of terror at someone discovering what her daughter had gone through. Several counts of drunk and disorderly behaviour. An ex-boyfriend who was no longer capable of fathering children. An arrest for public fornication, Lindsey had laughed when he'd read that a local priest had been arrested at the same time for the same charge. 

"If you're going to survive in the real world without causing bodily harm to anyone who irritates you, you have to learn how to turn anything, anything at all, that happens into an asset. If you're born to poverty, make it a drive to suceed. If you're damaged by the hand life deals you, make it grounds for acquittal. Everybody's reasons are positive ones, if you know how to word them." 

"If you don't word 'em right then nobody listens for long." Faith thought of a pretty blonde face shouting at her to shut up. Lindsey nodded, thinking that if Angel's friends were anything like the vampire himself, they had probably mimed sleep at Faith's reasons. No wonder she was now in need of a really good lawyer. "Everywhere I go, trouble follows." The tone of her voice was a little sad, a little angry. "I'm just a magnet for problems. Every day is just another crisis." 

"A crisis of Faith." Lindsey murmured. She looked up, a little startled, her eyes wide. As if she'd forgotten he was there. 

"What?" 

"Something somebody said to me once." He explained dismissivley. "I'm going to arrange for you to see a psychiatrist, to get a psychological profile." 

"Sure, shrink my head." New-model Faith was a very easygoing girl. "What about clothes?" 

"I'll have somebody buy something for you, I'll bring it with me tomorrow." 

"Golly gee Mr McDonald, can I sell my soul and become a lawyer and have lots of money too?" Faith quipped. 

"Only if you're a good girl and eat all your greens." Lindsey countered. 

~~~~ 

The next day was the most action-packed Faith had seen in a good long while. In the morning she awoke to a visit from her friendly neighbourhood psychoanalyst. 

"This is the part where you find the root of all my troubles and make it go away?" Faith queried. The woman's name was Lenore, and she seemed nice enough. Faith was just a little worn down by Watchers and lawyers and shrinks, looking out for her because of some altruistic motive. She wouldn't have put it in quite those words, but the idea remained the same. 

"No, this is the part where I find the root of all your troubles and tell your lawyer so he can convince a jury that you should have a chance at a normal life. Hopefully, that will in turn make it go away." 

"Well good luck." Faith said, leaning back in her very comfortable chair with a smile that held about as much belief in the woman as a shark has honest concern for a fish's wellbeing. 

"Can we talk about your parents?" 

Faith pretended to be thinking hard about that. "Hmm… I know, let's not, and say we did." 

Lenore felt the beginings of a headache build behind her eyelids. This was going to be a very, very long morning. 

~~~~~ 

"No." 

Lindsey watched as Faith took two steps back and almost tripped on the edge of her low bed. He didn't think he'd ever seen someone so inexplicably preturbed. He, unlike Faith, probably would have put it in those exact words. Her hair was breaking free of the ponytail she wore now, falling around her thin cheeks. Lindsey made a mental note to find out if she was eating enough. 

"I'm not going to wear that." 

Lindsey looked down at the offending dress, a light pink number he'd had a secretary from accounts pick up. She'd always struck him as being rather good at choosing appropriate outfits, and a request for 'virginal young woman, but one that's been through a lot' had yeilded this short collared piece. That was, judging by Faith's reaction, not going to be a viable option. 

He shrugged. 

"All right." He brushed the small crumple of fabric aside. Faith sat down gingerly on the edge of her bed, keeping her vision trained on the outfit, as if it was going to jump up and bite at her or something. Lindsey just added it to the quickly-growing mental profile he was forming of the girl. Yesterday she'd ammended his reference to her as a woman, explaining emphatically that she was a girl, just a girl. Straight underneath that piece of information he could now add 'intense dislike of short pink dresses'. No more weird then most of the data he kept on his clients. "I'll have something else brought over tomorrow." 

"Thanks." Faith seemed to relax a little. "Mr McDonald…" 

"I think we can be on a first name basis, don't you?" 

"Ok, whatever. Lindsey, then. I know I asked this the other day, but I really want to know." 

"Why?" 

"Yeah." Faith nodded, shifting over so he could sit on the edge of the bed too. It was the most comfortable position the little room had to offer. 

"Because you remind me of me." Lindsey offered. 

"That's a reason to go whole-hog on a person you know is never going to work for you, even if hell freezes over?" 

"Actually I hear that some parts have nice ski slopes." Lindsey mentioned conversationally, then laughed at Faith's expression. "That was a joke." 

"Oh, ok. With the people I've hung around lately, you can - " 

"Never tell." Lindsey finished her sentence. "I know the feeling." 

"I feel kind of bad about the shrink this morning. She was pretty cool, and I was a total bitch." Faith sighed. "Could you give her this? It's a notebook I've been keeping while I've been in here. Might help her some." 

"Sure." He looked down at the front, a squiggly shape of ballpoint lines coming into focus as a drawing of a dragon trapped in a spider's web across the front of the thin book. It was a beautiful image, the thin scribbly lines of ink looking like some finely spun metal. The twist of the dragon's tail as it tried to escape. "May I?" he asked. 

"Knock yourself out." Faith leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes. Lindsey opened the first page, the handwriting neater then he would have expected, neater then his own. 'Inside my shell I wait and bleed'… well, no surprises there, her cassette tapes were strewn all over the place, musical preference straightforward for such a contradictory girl. The next page had more drawings, a girl in a tower, letting her hair down to a prince who appeared to be cutting at it with an ornate knife. Then an intricate design on the next page after that, it looked vaguely celtic. Faith cracked one eye open and noticed what page he had paused on. 

"I was thinking of getting that as my next tattoo." She explained. 

"Could you leave it until after I've convinced twelve of your peers you're not going to do things like that anymore?" Lindsey asked. Faith raised her hand in a mock-salute. 

"Will do, sir, yessir." 

He turned the page, the brittle paper crackling a little, the thin blue lines running across it marring otherwise wonderous images. More lyrics. 'You'll never see me fall from grace'. 'Never' was underlined three times. 'No place to run and hide'. 'I wish you could see the world through my eyes'. 

"These are all Korn lyrics, aren't they?" Lindsey asked. Faith opened her eyes again. 

"Sure are. How come you know that?" 

"I'm hardly an eighty year old. In fact, I know people well over eighty who appreciate Korn. Over three hundred and eighty." 

"See, this is why I can't tell when people are joking." Faith said, her mouth curving up into a grin. Lindsey returned the smile. Looking back down at the page, he noticed another word, written in smaller letters, down in the lower righthand corner. 

'Daddy'. 

Another Korn song. He could almost hear the choral voices that began the piece of music. "Mother, please forgive me, I just had to get out all my pain and suffering…" A song of childhood rape, of parental betrayal. His gaze moved from the notebook up to Faith's face, he eyes had closed again and she had no idea he was watching her as she sat, a look of exhausted contentment on her features. She was beautiful, as fragile as the captured dragon she'd drawn. Was this some spirit's idea of a joke? Lindsey does one noble thing, saves some kids, and now the gods are playing dark avenger with his conscience? He didn't want to fall for Faith, she was just a girl, as she'd put it herself. A girl who, quite rightly, thought he was a souless, well, lawyer. 

He hadn't wanted to be born poor, either. Sometimes stuff happens that nobody plans, a little reminder that no matter how powerful you get, you're always at the mercy of a cruel fate. Like falling in love. 

~~~~ 

"She fell in with known petty criminals, specifically Rupert Giles, an older bachelor also known as Ripper," pause for effect, let the insinuation sink in. "And one Buffy Anne Summers, whose record lists juvenile convictions as an arsonist and who had been questioned over a murder only a year beforehand, one among several deaths that can be linked to her." 

D-day. The trial. Faith, sitting like a good little angel in her demure purple dress and soft pink cardigan. She'd been fairly picky about the clothes, although there had been no repeat of the pink dress episode. She and Lindsey had clashed over color ('No pastels. I don't care how innocent they look.'), style ('Just because I'm supposed to look reformed doesn't mean they have to hang like a sack'), and price tag ('hey, it's your money, I don't really care, I'm just saying that you're getting ripped off'). With every passing day since her crash and burn, Faith was regaining a little of her spark. No wonder he nickname had been firecracker as a child, Lindsey had found that out from the file Wolfram and Hart had compiled. It was perhaps a tenth as thick as the one he now carried in his head on her. (She likes to be called a girl. Not a woman, not a gal, just a girl. She likes popcorn and french fries. She hates feeling manipulated, by anyone, for any reason.) 

The jury was, as usual, lapping up every word he fed them. "Falling into a pattern of self-mutilating behavior, Faith lost touch with the momentary stability she'd found under the care of her guardian, Miss Lauren Gleeson," Her watcher. The vampire with cloven feet had gotten her, something Faith didn't talk about and had been extracted from the files. "Mr Finch was simply in an unfortunate place at an unfortunate time. So was my client. It's not Faith's fault that her parents treated her in the unconscionable way they did. It's not Faith's fault that her world fell apart, or that she sought comfort in the kind of people she'd spent her whole life in the company of. It's not Faith's fault her life up until that night brought her to the alley, any more then it was Mr Finch's. Everyone in this room is here today because we object to the wrongful death of an innocent person. Allen Finch did not deserve what happened to him that night. So, as thinking human beings, I urge you to consider Faith's future. Does she really deserve to be punished for something that wasn't her fault?" 

The lack of a hand made dramatic gesturing half as effective, but that was a moot point with a speech like that. Lindsey was not someone to feel overly proud over individual achievements, but it was a damn good closing, even for him. He'd written it the night before, looking over photocopies of Faith's notebook, the original was currently in a big pile of background evidence. The last page he'd kept staring at long after the clinching tearjerker was complete. More song lyrics, Faith really enjoyed her music. 

'I will only complicate you, trust in me and fall as well'. 

He could have written the same sentiment to her as she apparently had written to him, a small capital L under the words was enough to make him wonder. 

There was nobody in the public area waiting with baited breath for the verdict. Angel and his cohorts hadn't even known the trial date, as far as Lindsey knew. So the victory, with an extremely short deliberation, was a quiet one, Faith smiling when informed that she was free to go, ducking her head shyly. Lindsey wasn't sure if it was acting or genuine. Maybe even Faith didn't know. 

~~~~ 

"What are you going to do now?" 

They were sitting at a very expensive sidewalk café, Faith's first meal outside the big house. She'd ordered hotcakes and bacon at three in the afternoon, but since she was with Lindsey McDonald, the kitchen had gotten right on it. It had been Faith who'd spoken, asking herself as Lindsey adopted what she'd named his 'anywhere but here' face, a look Faith still couldn't decide on the meaning of. She'd narrowed it down to either boring, weird, evil demonic lawyer thoughts or deeply kinky sex thoughts. His face never gave her any clues to which of these it might actually be. 

"Hmmm?" the spell of the look broken, Lindsey's thoughts quite visibly returning to earth. 

"I was just asking myself what am I gonna do now? All this time it's been 'when I get out, when I get out'… ok, I'm out. I'm a reformed rouge vampire slayer, a homeless one at that. Doesn't make for a good resume." 

"Are you going to stay in town?" Lindsey was careful to keep his voice neutral. 

Faith had thought about that a lot. The deadpan, almost bored way the question had just been asked of her made her wonder again at what the hell made this guy so dear to her? Why was it cutting her up inside that he was techinically the enemy? 

"Haven't decided. Lindsey…" 

"Yes?" 

Faith attacked a particularly tough bacon strip with her knife and fork, glad of a little mindless distraction. "How do you know all about me? The stuff you were saying in the courtroom…" 

"All from the files." And from watching you, Faith. The way your eyes blink down when you're too embarrassed to look embarrassed. The way your hair falls around your cheeks. How you hold yourself, fearless and brave and still so fragile, even now that you're getting your confidence back. 

"I haven't told anyone about the cutting though. Like, the mugging, I figured that Lauren must have asid something to someone, and that's how you knew. But nobody on the planet knows about the cutting." 

Lindsey was once again amazed. He'd put that in because it was fashionable now for confused, unhappy teenage girls to strike out at their own bodies. He hadn't even considered that it might be true. She'd seemed so good at ... externalising ... her anger. 

"Even the scars are just on my legs, I wear pants mostly…" Faith continued to speak. Lindsey wanted to look right at that second, but resisted the temptation, just as he resisted the one to destroy the world that had damaged her so badly. 

"I thought Slayers healed up better then humans did." There was his voice. Being in such a verbal profession meant that he could find it when needed. 

"Oh, it fades." Faith rubbed at her cheek with one palm. "It all fades. I just made sure some of them didn't fade so quick." Sliding her leg around, she lifted the hem of her long skirt until Lindsey could see the faint white lines, delicate like filigree. 

On her shin, low enough to be covered by knee boots, high enough to be concealed by dresses, was a deep, angular set of lines. They formed a single letter. B. 

"I was gonna put an A on the other leg, after Angel made me feel even more miserable then Buffy had." Faith admitted. "But he caught me with the knife before I could do it. Thought I was going all homicidal on him." 

Lindsey couldn't resist looking at her other leg, the one she hadn't ended up marking. Except that it turned out she had. One long vertical line, and a shorter horizontal one joining it at a right angle from the base. The first letter of his name, an ugly, unhappy, angry letter L. 

"Do I make you more unhappy then they did?" he asked softly. Faith moved her skirt back down quickly, flushing from having him see something she didn't want him to. 

"No… yes… not in the same way." She struggled for words. 

"In what way then?" All he'd wanted to do was keep her safe, and he'd just hurt her more and more. 

"Why'd you have to be a black hat? Why'd you have to be so charming and perfect and, and just exactly what I always wanted!" Faith spluttered. "I'm not going to be a bad guy again. I have not only been there, but I have done that, and just because I got off doesn't mean I'm itching to go for round two." 

"Then don't." Lindsey said simply. "Let me set you up with a place to stay, some money for living expenses, at least until you get on your feet and decide what you want to do. Then, it's your call if you want to try and save my soul or if lawyers are a lost cause. You've had enough major life-upheavals for one day, Faith. Leave that stuff for later." 

That left her quiet for a moment. Lindsey was surprised at himself. Arguments of that clarity usually took him a little longer to think of. But he would have said anything at that point not to lose her. Just because desperation made him say it, however, didn't make it any less true. 

"Where will I live?" 

"I'll get you an apartment in the same building I live in." Lindsey offered, the perpetual teenage boy that lives inside all men crowing at this victory. 

"Will it have a playstation? The last apartment given to me by a rich evil guy had a playstation in it." 

"You can have ten playstations if you want them." Lindsey had a sudden urge to spin around lamp posts and sing stupidly happy songs. An afternoon had never looked sunnier. 

"Nah. I only need one. Two control pads, though. I'm planning on having company over pretty often." 

Faith wasn't sure what was going to happen. Her future was a blank page in her notebook, space for her to put anything she wanted. For all she knew, Lindsey would never stop working for Wolfram and Hart, or Angel would kill him before he could come back to the light side of the force, or she'd end up just as bored on the outside as she had been in jail and would end up drinking like her mother. Or maybe Lindsey would turn good, and they could go live on the other side of the country or something, or work with Angel Investigations. Or maybe something else again, she'd always been a daydreamer, imagining things that she could do or a way things could have been . There would be time for all that tomorrow. 

And it was only thanks to Lindsey that she had one of those at all. 

Impulsivley, demonstrating once again how she'd ended up with the name firecracker, Faith leant across the café table and kissed Lindsey. Time for everything else tomorrow.


	2. Magdalena

"Please leave your message after the tone."

Beep.

"Hey B. I just thought I'd leave you a number in case you needed to get in touch while we're on the road. The cell number is 0154348. We should be there by evening. See you soon, girlfriend."

Beep.

~~~~

Clothes littered Lindsey's apartment. He had a cleaning service, of course, and usually their visits were closely spaced enough so that there was no time for this much mess to accumulate. Faith's concept of packing, however, was turning the place into modern art. A conceptual design of every horizontal surface shrouded in Armani or Prada.

Currently she was rejecting the zillionth shirt as inappropriate.

"I give up. You have nothing to wear. This will do." Faith nodded in decision and walked over to where Lindsey was standing, reading over his daily planner for the weekend.

"Put that away and help me put this on you." Faith was discovering a clucky side she hadn't realised was in her. It was just commonsense for her to help Lindsey with things like getting dressed. Two hands are better then one. Three hands, aside from all the kinky images brought up by the thought, were basically not much more useful then two hands. When Lindsey's shirt was buttoned she bent down to tie his shoelaces.

"You look like Mary, washing Christ's feet." Lindsey joked. He'd felt awkward with Faith helping him so much, at first. But there was always an awkwardness in the air between them anyway. Neither had ever been comfortable with the concept of 'relationship', and even caring about each other as much as they did wasn't enough to dispel that fear of getting too close.

"I thought Mary was the one who gave birth as a virgin." Faith quirked an eyebrow up with a smile.

"There's two Marys in the Jesus story."

"Oh, ok. I thought Judas was the usual character to make a comparison with for you or me though." Faith finished tying the laces and stood again, stretching her arms up to work out a kink in her shoulder. Lindsey moved behind her and started giving a one-handed massage to the cramped area.

"See, I don't think that metaphor works properly." Lindsey argued. "Because Judas kissed Jesus when he betrayed him. I'm pretty sure I'd remember throwing myself at Angel like that."

That gave Faith the gigglefits. She put her hand over her mouth but couldn't stop shaking with laughter. Lindsey smiled. He loved to see her happy, this trip away was putting her in high spirits.

"Come on, the car's going to be here soon." he reminded her.

~~~~

Faith had given up on being nonchalant over everything that happened to her, so her awe at the minibar and television in the back of the limo was plainly showing on her face. Being a kept girl certainly had an upside.

When Lindsey had told her two nights before that he had to go to Sunnydale on the weekend, she'd been a little nervous. Wait, scratch that – she'd be terrified out of her mind. Pilots who bombed cities into ruins didn't usually circle back for social calls later. But a phone call to Buffy later – testing the water, seeing if it was going to burn her again – had made Faith decide to give it a shot. If worst came to worst, she could get the hell outta there, and if worst didn't come to worst, then she could do a little of that twelve-stepping and make up for a little of the mayhem she'd wrought.

"Can I open the top and stand up?" she begged Lindsey. He rolled his eyes, not out of exasperation but in playacting reluctance. She was so alive when she was happy. "Please please please."

"Oh all right." he agreed in tones of mock exhaustion. It was a bright day, colder then usual, a chill that had started a few weeks before showed no sign of lifting. Faith pressed a button to open the panel in the roof and then stood with her upper body out, wind streaming through her hair.

"Wow. Lind, you gotta try this!" Faith called. Lindsey looked down at the papers he should read over before they got there, then at the shape of Faith, half-obscured by the roof. What the hell, you only lived once. As far as Lindsey knew anyway.

Putting the papers aside, he joined Faith up in the space above the cabin of the stretch car. The roar in his ears from the wind was deafening, but gave one hell of a rush. Faith looked over at him and laughed, and he laughed back without even thinking about it. This is what people meant by the good life.

~~~~~

"Are you going to at least meet the Scoobies or go straight to your evildoin?" Faith asked, sprawled across one of the soft bench seats. They'd closed the top when the cold got too much, when their hair was about as windknotted as could be. Out of all the facets of what they shared, the imbalance between their morals was turning out to be a fairly non-problematic one. Faith just accepted what Lindsey did, and Lindsey in turn didn't interfere as Faith fumbled to find out who she really was.

"We'll be there before nightfall. I can come say hello. And all day tomorrow I'm free."

Faith nodded.

"Good. I feel safer when you're around." It didn't make any sense, she was a hell of a lot stronger then he was. But, then again, it did make sense, somehow. Two wrongs may not make a right but two unbalanced people had somehow stumbled on a way to find an even keel together.

~~~~

Faith's knuckles hit the wood of the door twice, the wood warm from a day in the path of the sunlight that dappled the courtyard outside. Evening in Sunnydale was a warm, lazy thing, unlike the cold day-to-night time currently offered in LA. Her hand was shaking.

Buffy opened the door. For a second her gaze was that of a natural warrior, darting from Lindsey's arm to Faith's face to where they were standing in relation to possible weapons. Then the instinct fell away and she threw herself at Faith, hugging her tight. It was an embrace more forceful then either of them could have given anybody else. Nobody in the whole world was as strong as Buffy and Faith were. There were some terribly dark moments in their shared history, but this was more important. Faith could feel how lonely Buffy was in a little corner of her spirit, felt the same loneliness herself. Nobody in the world was the same as them, they had to stick together.

Faith couldn't expect every member of the Sunnydale gang to be as forgiving though. She was still scared.

Willow was just inside, sitting on a couch with a book on her lap. Red was the only teenager Faith had ever met who read books that thick when it wasn't study or averting the end of the world. She looked up, surprise ghosting across her face before she clamped down and shut her expression down into stony indifference. So, Buffy hadn't told anyone that Faith was coming.

Faith wasn't going to apologise. The words would sound empty, and couldn't fix anything.

"Hey Willow." she ventured.

"Hey." the young witch replied shortly. "Buffy, can I talk to you for a minute?"

While Buffy and Willow talked in hushed voices in the next room, Faith stood, feeling aimless and out of place. Lindsey slipped his hand into hers with a comforting squeeze. She gave him a small smile in return.

The hushed voices rose into shouts. Faith squeezed Lindsey's hand, needing the support.

"You heard what Cordelia said on the phone! She tortured Wesley. She's evil, Buffy."

"Angel did things to people when he was bad and people gave him another chance."

"Yeah, because he did good stuff to make for it."

"You haven't given her a chance."

"Why do you always give people another chance, Buffy? Ok, so she's had it rough. Big deal. I'm not going to make up with her just because you want everything nice and friendly. I hate her."

When Buffy returned, she was alone. Willow obviously wasn't going to come out until Faith was gone.

"Um, I think I'll go with Lindsey to the hotel." Faith said, feeling uncomfortable. Buffy looked a little upset, but she did understand. There wasn't going to be any forgiving or forgetting here.

"Can you at least introduce us?" the blonde Slayer asked.

"Right. Buffy, this is Lindsey, Lindsey, this is Buffy." Lindsey knew all about Buffy, of course. Buffy knew nothing about Faith's new companion.

"Pleased to meet you." Buffy held her hand out, Lindsey had to let go of Faith's for a moment while he shook it. Faith felt worlds better when he touched her palm again. Being this dependant on someone was more then a little scary, but she didn't think she could stop now. Like when you've launched yourself off a rock forty feet above water, and you have enough time to think 'no turning back' before you hit the lake.

"Likewise." Lindsey said politely.

"Give me a call tomorrow." Faith said to Buffy as they left. "I mean, if you want to. If you don't, that's cool."

"I'll be sure to." Buffy assured her with a smile. Forgive and forget.

~~~~~

"Lind?" Faith was lying against his chest on the double bed, her hair fanned out across him.

"Yes?"

"What'd you think of Buffy?" the question had been bugging her. After Angel and whatshisname, Riley, Faith had decided that Buffy must have something akin to a siren's call that made guys love her so totally they could barely look at anyone else.

"She's a beautiful brat. I knew that anyway, from what you'd told me." Lindsey played with Faith's hair, winding it between his fingers idly. It was dusk, he'd have to get to work soon. But for now there was calm. Faith had been understandably quiet since they'd left Buffy and come to the hotel.

"So you thought she was beautiful?" Faith sounded unsurprised and sad.

"Hey." Lindsey tilted her chin up so she was looking at him. "I also think Picasso paintings are beautiful. Doesn't mean I like them anywhere near as much as I like you."

That made Faith look a little happier. She snuggled down against his chest again. "Lind?"

"Yes?"

"Can I come with you tonight?"

~~~~

This felt like home for Faith. She knew these graves, these gnarled old trees. Sunnydale cemetery was as much a home as anywhere else she'd ever had.

An old crypt, the bushes cleared away around the door and a few cigarette butts littering the exposed ground. The stake in Faith's hand felt comfortable, like a part of her she'd been missing. Part of her reason for coming was terror at the thought of being alone, part of it a wish to protect Lindsey from anything that might happen. She'd lost too much not to protect what she still had.

"Anybody here?" she asked, sauntering into the airless room designed as a home for the dead and being used for exactly that purpose. Faith was doing an almost flawless impersonation of Faith, Lindsey thought to himself as he followed her down a short flight of stairs. If he didn't know better, he'd swear she was still the swaggering, lawless, conscience-free girl that Sunnydale knew her as.

"Who wants to know?" an English accent asked her from the shadows as Spike stepped out, looking slightly sleep-crumpled but otherwise exactly as he always looked. "Hey, I know who you are."

"Yeah, well, we're even then I guess." Faith sat herself down on the altar in the centre of the room, brushing aside the dingy blanket covering it.

"Last I heard, you were in jail."

"Yeah, well, I'm not now." Faith replied with a shrug. Impeccable performance, Lindsey wondered for a second if acting this was very easy for Faith, or impossibly hard. As was common when it came to Faith, he didn't know which was more likely.

"So I'm right then, you are Faith."

"And you're William the Bloody." Faith grinned, her smile so different from the one he was used to seeing on her face that Lindsey felt chilled by it. She would have been a terrifying enemy, if it had ever come to that.

"Who's the suit?" Spike asked, flicking his head to where Lindsey stood in the doorway.

"Lindsey McDonald. I have a proposition for you."

~~~~~

Lindsey had planned his weekend to include a day for Spike to think the proposal over. The way things turned out, though, nowhere near that amount of time was needed.

"Ok, I'll do it." Spike said as soon as Lindsey and Faith had finished speaking.

"You don't need any time to consider the pros and cons – "

"What cons?" Spike laughed, taking a drag from his cigarette. "You get my chip out, I help you kill Angel. That's what we call my kind of plan."

In Faith's new moral code, this didn't really count as a transgression. Spike was evil anyway, and wanted to kill Angel anyway. Eventually would have gotten the chip out anyway. That's what she'd been telling herself, until remembering that anything that needs justifying to yourself is probably not a good thing. Upon reaching that conclusion, Faith had given up. She wasn't killing or maiming anybody. That still counted as reformed, no matter what else she was doing with her time.

Since Spike had agreed so readily, there was no reason to stay in Sunnydale any longer. Faith called Buffy from the road on the way back.

"Hey B. I didn't wake you, did I?"

"No, I was up."

"I just wanted to tell you I'm going home."

"Oh, ok." Buffy sounded surprised. "You weren't here long."

"Yeah, I know, but Lindsey got everything finished faster then he thought. And by the way, I don't think you'll have any more trouble from Spike somehow."

"Oh, ok." Buffy said again, sounding doubly surprised. "Thankyou. I'm not heartbroken at seeing the end of that particular vamp. I guess I owe you one."

More like I owe you one less, Faith thought silently to herself. If it were even true to begin with.

"Well, I gotta go. It was good to see you." Faith said finally. She'd just wanted to hear Buffy's voice again, she wasn't sure exactly why.

"Yeah, we'll keep in touch." Buffy enthused, neither of them actually believing the words.

"Sure. Good luck to ya, B." Faith closed the mouthpiece before Buffy could reply, looking at the dark road outside the bright bubble of the car. Spike and Lindsey were talking about things she'd rather not hear. This had to be the most unhealthy situation for Faith to be in, from a mental wellbeing point of view. She couldn't live like this for long, torn between her own desire to change and Lindsey's choices in the opposite direction. Couldn't break away either.

~~~~

The building Faith lived in had been built by Wolfram and Hart, which wasn't that obvious at first glance. Second glance offered a few little oddities. The apartment numbers weren't sequential. Lindsey lived in apartment number thirty three, the next apartment over was forty one. Faith lived two floors down, her address was apartment twenty, which was beside apartments fifteen and twenty seven. It was illogical, until a visitor actually went inside any of the apartments and noticed the small brass numbers stamped on each door handle between rooms. Faith's living room was twenty, but her kitchen was twenty one, her bedroom twenty four. An extra precaution against some of the more nocturnal tenants, every room was a different residence that needed inviting into. The bigger the apartment, the more numbers it used up.

Spike got a ground floor pad, one that had been recently vacated due to unforseen death. Everyone in the place was somehow tied to the lawfirm, so tenant turnover was frequent. Spike liked his apartment a lot. It was mostly decorated in red and black, the last inhabitant hadn't been big on muted earth tones or pastels. It was almost dawn, and he was tired. Much as he wanted the chip out, sleep was pretty much a requirement at this point.

In the kitchen he found a fridge filled with blood, the packets stacked like rare gemstones, gleaming in the faint light. A taste test proved them to be human blood, and not just namby-pamby donor blood either, this was tart and tasty scared-out-of-their-little-mortal-mind-at-time-of-bleeding blood. There was a note attached to the white door of the freezer section, stuck on with a magnet shaped like a shark. Spike appreciated that.

"Welcome to Wolfram and Hart. Any special needs should be made known to a member of our staff. We look forward to working with you!"

The exclamation point was the final touch that made Spike decide that this was going to be a whole lot of fun.

~~~~

Faith rubbed her eyes. Who the hell was banging on her door at this time of day? A glance over at her alarm clock told her that it was only one in the afternoon. Her forehead wrinkled up with annoyance. Even the more evil people in the building were usually considerate enough to respect people's schedules. Faith was not a morning person, and one pm was close enough to morning to count. Whoever was banging was just plain rude.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming! Keep your skin on." Faith grumbled.

Spike was standing outside, tapping his foot and looking around. Sizing up the joint, Faith thought.

"Yes?" she asked, still annoyed at being awoken.

"Can we de-cyborg me now?" Spike asked. Faith looked at him in incomprehension. "Can we get the chip out yet?" he tried.

"You gotta ask Lindsey about that. I don't work at the firm." Faith didn't try to hide her jaw-cracking yawn. She just wanted more sleep.

"Well what time does he get up?" Spike sighed with annoyance of his own. At least the whelps in Sunnydale went out of their way to do good at every opportunity. Faith looked like she could care less about Spike's desperate need to get the microchip as far away from his body as possible.

"Around four. Same as me, when idiot vampires don't wake me up early." Faith walked away from the front door towards her kitchen, needing coffee more then most animals need air. Spike stood in the hallway, looking vaguely expectant. Faith worked out why and waved her hand at him.

"You can come in, you can sit on the couch and watch TV or something until Lindsey heads into work." Giving his access to the living room was basically harmless. How much trouble could he really cause to her television or her magazines?

Spike stepped through the doorway and sat down, flicking through the channels offered. There was nothing on. Faith came back out of the kitchen, drinking her daily shot of caffeine.

"Do you have any videos?" Spike asked, looking around the room with his usual calculating gaze. Faith shook her head.

"No."

"What about music? Anything good?" Spike noticed the large stereo in the corner.

"No, I just moved in." Faith thought it likely her definition of 'good' and Spike's would be slightly different anyway.

"What do you do here for fun anyway? I'd be bored out of my bleeding skull in a place like this."

Faith shrugged. "I'm not here that much."

"Too busy shagging lawyer boy upstairs?" Spike asked with a smirk. Faith looked up at ceiling, as if asking God to give her strength. No wonder Buffy had been pleased at the thought of someone dusting him. Forget pure evil, Spike was just annoying.

"Do you have something better to do with your time then irritate me?" she asked the bleach-blond vampire, putting her coffee cup down (without a coaster, she could imagine the mayor turning over in his grave – or wherever they had put all the snake bits).

"Not really." Spike put his hands behind his head and leaned back with a grin. Faith sighed.

"Look, I would like to get some more sleep, or at least some quiet for a few hours. Why don't you run along home and we'll come and get you when we're good and ready?"

Spike shook his head. "Nah. I think I'll stay here and make wry observations on the pathetic state of affairs that is your young life. Sound good to you?"

"No." Faith opened the front door again.

"You humans have no sense of humor, know that?" Spike said as he left. Faith was just glad he'd taken the hint and left her alone.

She looked at the daily newspaper sitting on her front doormat. Maybe she could find a job, perhaps her life would fall into place a little more if she was using her time for something productive.

Faith imagined the kind of job she could apply for. 'Wanted: one ex-evil vampire Slayer. Must have own transportation.' There couldn't be many things she was qualified for. Oh well, she'd get a waitress position and work her way up. Something to get her out of the house for a few hours, anyway.

~~~~

Spike lit another smoke as he walked back down to his apartment. The stairs and the elevator in the building were both designed for people who preferred the no-window look. The stairs killed a little bit more of his time, at least. He just wanted to get the chip out and have some fun. The fact that he could attack Angel with or without the chip struck him as something he probably shouldn't mention to Wolfram and Hart. Best to let them think it was in their best interests to re-fang him.

As he opened his door the front entrance to the apartment next door opened and a slight blonde figure stepped out, clad in a figure-hugging blue dress.

"Hey neighbour." she said with a smile. Spike looked shocked, to say the least. His eyebrows were doing their best to become part of his hairline.

"Darla. What a nice surprise. Won't you come in?" He kicked the now-unlocked door open with his heel and motioned her to come in. "I heard Angel swept you under the rug, literally."

"I heard he did the same to you, only not so literally." she replied, her words barbed but coupled with the kind of innocent-and-evil smile only Darla could pull off.

Spike shrugged. "Doesn't matter. I plan on evening that particular score fairly soon."

"Then it looks like we're working together. Wolfram and Hart are quite anxious for our help." Darla smiled again, turning her body from side to side in a gesture that made Spike wonder how he'd gone so long without thinking of her. They'd made quite a pack, once upon a time. Angelus, Drusilla, Darla and Spike. One golden-haired mother and three brunette children, a family of the most homicidal kind. The pack had splintered in the end, of course, but it had been a great time.

"I'm really starting to like Los Angeles." Spike sat down on his own couch. This room was so much better then Faith's living area. He seriously hoped that the girl hadn't chosen the peach-and-lavender color scheme. He'd thought more of her. Although, between Angelus and Dru, he'd have no more truck with dark beauties with insane eyes. Not that Faith seemed as insane as people had made out to him she was.

"So am I." Darla sat down opposite him in an armchair. "There's enough darkness here to sustain us for eternity. Like old times. The rich are as blind as the old aristocracy, they never see the poor dying right on the street beside them. Like shooting fish in a barrel."

Spike swallowed a little, if he'd had to breathe he would have been doing so a little heavier. Darla's eyes gleamed at the thought of the mayhem she could cause.

"Once I get this chip out, I'm going to eat ten of the biggest, juiciest wannabe actresses I can find, then some street urchins for desert." Spike vowed to himself, mouth watering at the thought of being able to hunt again.

"That's right, you've got a chip. Such a pity you're… impotent. We could have so much fun." Darla whispered, leaning in close to him. Spike growled, only half in warning. That made Darla grin, her face morphing into the demon. That was enough to send Spike over the edge, grabbing at her and kissing her hungrily.

Hell, he had a few hours to kill anyway, and it beat watching old soap operas.

~~~~

Faith couldn't sleep after Spike had left. The jolt of caffeine probably hadn't helped with that. She read through the want ads in the paper, finally calling up a Mexican restaurant that was looking for kitchenhands. They agreed to give her an interview, which then led to a search through her wardrobe for something she could wear to it. A pair of black jeans and a tight grey tshirt was appropriate enough. She put the ensemble aside to wear to the restaurant the next afternoon at three, a time she jotted onto her calendar.

She tried to paint on her easel, but just wasn't in the mood. The smell of the paint was nice though, she liked having a hobby. It made for a better time-waster then killing the innocent, anyway.

The ring of the telephone made her jump. She'd never lived in a place with a phone connection before, now she even had the internet. She didn't use it though, even with the odds of running into Willow at almost nil she didn't want to chance it.

"Hello?" Faith wondered if she had a good phone manner. Well, the Mexican place was giving her an interview, so she guessed so.

"How are you?" It was Lindsey. She thought that was cute, that he called even though he lived so close by.

"Pretty much peachy keen." Faith pulled faces at herself in the mirror as she talked. Maybe she should pierce her eyebrow instead of getting another tattoo.

"Glad to hear it. What're your plans for tonight?"

"Nothing much. I've got a job interview, but that's not until tomorrow afternoon."

"Would you like to go out to dinner tonight then?" Lindsey was looking through his address book as he talked, choosing which restaurant to make reservations at.

"Sounds like fun. Hey, Lind?"

"Yes?"

"Should I get an eyebrow ring?"

~~~~

The return of Spike to the land of the lethal took almost as much time as his decision to come to LA. The Wolfram and Hart doctors made an incision on his arm and inserted a small grey object under the skin.

"Hey, I said I wanted it removed, not more gadgets in me." Spike objected. He wondered if the 'no violence to humans' policy of the original chip was programmed to include lawyers in the definition.

"The placement of the circuitry is too close to vital organs for easy, safe removal." the doctor explained patiently. "This second chip has a magnetic opposite to the first. It voids any signals sent."

"So I can hurt people again." Spike prompted. The doctor nodded. Spike grinned evilly, trying to remember the last time he'd eaten a medical practitioner.

"Good doctors are so hard to find." a voice from the doorway made Spike pause. An older man, along with Lindsey, Darla, and a woman he'd never seen, was standing in the doorway.

"Would I really do a thing like that?" Spike asked with a charming smile. The one who'd spoken, the man, nodded in greeting to Spike and turned to go. Lindsey and Darla followed him, Darla giving Spike a wink over her shoulder as she left.

"We have no doubt that you would. Part of the reason we hired you." the unknown woman said, striding over confidently and holding her hand. "Lilah Morgan."

"Yeah, well, when do I get to do some killing?" Spike asked. Lilah smiled.

"Initiative. That's something I like in my co-workers."

~~~~

"I can't believe they honestly expect us to work for them! I mean, just because they brought you back from hell and made me capable of hurting humans again, they really think we're going to cooperate."

Darla pretended to listen to Spike's half-drunken ranting, watching the slightly built bartender who was serving them. He was pretty enough in a boring, California way. She wondered if he was just as bland looking inside out. She wanted to find out.

"We hafta showem who'ze boss." Spike slurred, waving his dogend around for emphasis. "Shakem, shakem up a little."

"How do you think we should do that?" Darla asked, beckoning the pretty boy over. She was too hungry to play with her food for long, but she could wait a minute, until Spike was finished his diatribe. She wanted to share.

"Gotta make em scared of us, don't we? Gotta make em tremble in their whatsanames, boots."

"I didn't notice any of them wearing boots." Darla said, just for the joy of seeing Spike's train of thought momentarily derailed while he considered that. Then she got an idea.

"How about we kill one of them?" she suggested, before turning and giving the bartender a napkin with a message on it telling him to meet her out the back in five minutes. He read it and smiled at her. Darla smiled back in her innocent-but-evil way.

"Yeah. Yeah! We'll kill one of them. Lindsey, the bloke who lives upstairs. That'll showem." Spike agreed. "I know jus' the place to do it too."

"Good." Darla smiled, then grabbed Spike's hand and dragged him to out the back of the bar. Going out to dinner with a lover was always a good time.

~~~~

When they'd finished dinner, Faith and Lindsey went back to his apartment. It struck Lindsey that they always went to his place, never hers, and Faith always left as soon as any bedroom activity was over. She never lingered anywhere for longer then she wanted to, he knew that. Why she never wanted to linger, though, was something that troubled him. It wasn't like he didn't lavish all the affection he could on her, no matter how screwed up that affection may have been.

As she started kissing him and tugging at his collar, Lindsey wanted to stop and ask her. It was more important that they talk about this. But Faith would hear none of it, silencing him quite effectively with her mouth. He sighed and responded. It was like he'd told her, there was time for everything tomorrow. He'd talk to her about it then.

~~~~

The Mexican restaurant was run by a small German woman, the oddity of that making Faith smile. Gretel had hired her on the spot.

"You work from three until ten tonight, yes?" she asked, or ordered, Faith. Either way, Faith nodded in agreement. It was easy work, and she didn't mind the repetition.

A young black man came to the back door and said that they had some food for his charity. Faith found the boxes put aside and offered to help carry them out. The man, he said his name was Gunn, thanked her for her help.

"That for decoration or you believe that stuff?" he asked when the boxes were loaded, gesturing to her neck. Faith put her hand up to touch the tiny gold cross that Lindsey had given her.

"Protection." she said frankly. He'd either think she was a crazy whack job or a paranoid whack job. Faith didn't really care. To her surprise, Gunn nodded.

"It's good to see young people with a realistic view of the world. How late you working tonight?"

"Ten." Faith wondered how many people there really were in the world who knew what the world was really like.

"Got any other 'protection'?" Gunn asked her, looking concerned. Faith shook her head.

"No. I'll be fine, don't worry."

"Here. Just in case." he handed her a stake, a good, sturdy, thick one made out of pale ash wood. Faith tucked it into the back of the waistband of her jeans with a smile.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Gunn nodded in polite farewell as he climbed up next to the boxes on the back of the truck. "See you round."

~~~~

Darla and Spike cornered Lindsey as soon as he got inside the building. He made a break for the elevators but they'd been expecting that. His fear hung thick in the air, the cloying smell making the two undead sets of nostrils flare with hunger.

Darla struck first, burying her fangs in the side of Lindsey's neck. It took all the self control she had to break away when he was drained enough to be docile. They took the elevator up the Faith's floor, Spike kicked the door to the girl's apartment in. Throwing Lindsey inside, he stepped over the threshold and turned to Darla, who was waiting with her arms crossed, game face in place. Spike lifted Lindsey to his feet.

"Invite her in." he ordered the half-conscious man. Lindsey mumbled something incoherent. Spike shook him, making his head fall forward.

"C'min." Lindsey's voice was slurred, his throat bleeding sluggishly. Darla smiled as she stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

Now the fun could start.

~~~~

Faith knew something was wrong as soon as she rounded the corner in the hallway to her front door. The lock was hanging loose, kicked in from it's usual placement. Dark, icy fear began to form in the pit of her stomach. Something was very, very wrong here.

The peach-and-lavender decor of her front room was gone. Now it looked far more like Spike's residence. Red everywhere, on the carpet, the walls, the sofa. Especially the sofa, where Lindsey lay like a discarded toy. Faith ran over and knelt beside him, shaking his shoulders as best she could without hurting any of the wounds.

"Lind? Can you hear me?"

After a few seconds, an eternity, Lindsey's eyes slid open to half mast. His breathing was a wet, shallow sound.

"Faith... love you..." he murmured. Typical, Faith thought to herself. The first time in her life anyone had ever said 'I love you' and she wasn't in a position to appreciate it.

"Lindsey McDonald, don't you dare die on me!" she shouted, shaking his shoulders again when his eyes had begun to close. "Hold on. Please, just hold on."

Putting Lindsey's arm around her shoulders, Faith stood up carefully and moved as quickly as she could out the door and down the hallway to the elevator. She'd go for help the only place she knew to get it.

~~~~

The smell of blood hit Angel's senses like a hammer seconds before Faith and Lindsey came through the door. The man was unconscious by this stage, Faith put him down on the floor carefully. It was obvious how close to death he was, the skin of his eyelids purpling and his lips devoid of color save for a blue tint.

Cordelia stood up so fast she knocked her chair over, Wesley dropped his coffee cup.

"Help him!" Faith shouted at Angel. He looked at Lindsey and shook his head.

"He's dying. I can't do anything." There were a million questions that they could ask her, time for none of them.

"Make him like you. You have to save him!" Faith was frantic, her eyes wild. Angel stepped in closer, like a lion tamer careful of how much farther he could tread safely.

"I'm not going to do that, Faith."

Reaching to the back of her jeans, Faith pulled out the stake Gunn had given her. "Help him or I'll kill you where you stand." her hands were shaking.

"You can't do that. You know you can't." Angel said calmly, praying that he was right about that.

"I can't let him die." Faith said through gritted teeth, holding the stake up threateningly. It was an empty threat though, and both Angel and Faith knew this.

Wesley, standing beside Cordelia, was reminded suddenly of another night, another Slayer, and words so much like the ones Faith was saying, muttered with the same force, the same heartbroken desperation.

Faith stood frozen, the small sharpened piece of wood raised, for a moment. Angel didn't move. The frame stayed static until Faith crumpled, dropping the stake and curling her body around Lindsey's. She was shaking with sobs.

Wesley knew that this was the last moment he could say anything. He wondered why he cared at all.

"Angel…" he said before halting. Angel's head whipped around to look at him. Wesley didn't know what to say. He hoped Angel would understand what he wanted to say but had no idea how.

Cordelia, obviously understanding and seeing that Angel still needed a push to take action, moved in towards Faith, touching her shoulder lightly.

"Faith? Come on, move away, give Angel some room." her voice was soft. Faith, wracked by soul-shaking sobs, moved away a little, her fingers still interlocked with Lindsey's limp ones.

Angel looked between his two employees, incomprehension in his eyes. Wesley held his gaze.

"She'll be lost if you don't." he said simply. Angel obviously wasn't happy with the idea, but saw the quasi-logic to the plea. Kneeling next to Lindsey, Angel slapped his cheek lightly.

"Lindsey?"

Faith sobbed again, a little hiccup. Angel gave up on trying to wake the man and bit into his own wrist. The bitter vampire blood that welled up tasted dead on his tongue, dusty and rotten. He choked on it, moving the wound away from his mouth and putting it to Lindsey's lips.

Another frozen second, where nobody moved and nobody spoke. Then Lindsey's eyes opened wide, the pupils tiny pinpoints of black suddenly dilating wide as he gulped at the bite.

Faith sobbed again, a hopeful sound as Lindsey gripped her hand. His hair, matted and dark with blood, was sticking to his cheeks. Her own face was painted with lines of gore from where he had fallen against her as she had carried him.

"It's ok, Lind. You're gonna be ok." she whispered. His eyes whirled, taking in what was going on. Coughing a little against Angel's wrist, Lindsey struggled to sit up. Angel moved away, pressing his other thumb against the ragged gash.

"Thankyou, thankyou." Faith said to Angel. He just turned away. Lindsey glared at his back, sucking a smear of blood off his lower lip and wincing at the burning pleasure/pain it tasted of.

The marks Darla and Spike had left were fading on his skin, knitting in like a video on fast forward.

"Angel." Lindsey said, his voice harsh. The vampire didn't turn. Lindsey stood up slowly, letting Faith sling his arm across her shoulders and support his weight. He turned to Wesley and Cordelia.

"Thankyou." he said, before walking out of the room with as much dignity as he could find.

~~~~

Faith didn't believe in regretting things. She didn't regret it. But she was afraid.

After all, vampires and vampire Slayers didn't play happy families that well.

His hand was in hers, holding on as if she was all that was keeping him from drowning. She could relate. For the first few minutes after they left Angel, Wesley and Cordelia, Lindsey's breath came out in rough, short gasps, before stopping altogether. He didn't speak.

Neither did Faith.

They made it back to his apartment eventually, the stickiness on their skin giving way to the flaky texture of dried blood. Faith felt ill.

He fell exhaustedly onto the bed, looking as sickly as she felt, his eyes closed. Faith stood, at a loss, wondering if she should be ready for an attack, from Lindsey or from two certain blonde intruders. No, they couldn't come here, they'd never been invited.

What had happened in the last hour hit her all at once, overwhelming her and causing her to fall to her knees. How many tears could she cry in one night? Exhaustion and stress and terror and confusion battered at her and left her feeling even smaller then she had when she'd broken down in Angel's arms, such a short time and such a long time ago.

She sensed Lindsey moving a spilt second before he put his arm around her, stroking her hair and rocking her gently. She leaned against him. He helped her to move onto the bed, where they held onto each other as if their lives depended on it.

~~~~

"Ah, Lindsey. Glad to see you could join us." Holland welcomed him as he opened the door to the boardroom gingerly.

Darla and Spike both looked over in shock, their jaws dropping and eyes narrowing. Lindsey smiled at them, a gloating smirk. Lilah's face looked like she'd just eaten something sour.

"You're looking a little pale there. Getting enough sun?" she asked. Lindsey gave a little half-shrug.

"Speaking of that, I was wondering if thicker curtains could be arranged for my office." he said conversationally to Holland.

"Of course. Any other alterations you need, just let us know." Always so accommodating. What a caring, compassionate boss.

~~~~~

The new curtains, installed almost as soon as he had asked for them, were pushed back now, the sprawling city lying like cheap glitter below. He could feel the night like a living animal. This place was beautiful and savage, like a bird of prey. After a few moments contemplating the view, he spun in his chair and picked up the telephone.

Faith was sitting at the apartment window with her knees curled up, looking out at the city. All the lights in Lindsey's apartment were turned off. She couldn't go back to hers until they'd put a new carpet down. Oh well, she'd meant to redecorate anyway. And Lindsey had wanted her here, he had been cryptic but emphatic, begging her to linger. Faith had intended to anyway. She felt safer with him nearby, and she needed very much to feel safe right now.

The telephone's ring jarred her out of her still, sad thoughts.

"Hello?"

"Hey. Are you ok?" Lindsey was concerned. Her voice had sounded so forlorn.

"All things considered." Faith tried to sound happier. He didn't need to have her as an added worry.

"Are you going to go back to work?"

"Maybe in a few days. Not just yet." Not until I know what the hell I'm going to do now. "Do you feel any different?"

"Yes." It was the truth, he did feel different. He heard Faith's muted gasp.

"Not in a de-souled way. I think I got rid of that a while ago." he assured her. Luckily, Faith's sense of humour was as dark as his.

"I'm glad. I'd hate to have to stake you after all the effort I've put into you." she said, playing with her little gold cross unconsciously while she spoke.

"Faith..."

"I know." Faith realised suddenly that she had known for quite a while. "I love you too."

She pulled the necklace off and threw it out the window.

~~~~~~

Darla put her arm around Spike's neck, standing behind the chair he was slouched in. A girl in bright blue pants and a black tshirt lay sprawled on the carpet in front of them, her eyes gazing up, dead.

"Don't sulk. We'll find a way to get them, don't worry. We'll get all of them."

Spike smiled slowly and half-turned, rubbing his cheek against Darla's.

"We'll make them see who's really in charge here."


	3. Fallen

The water runs over her body as she stands still as death under the onslaught. Head bowed, hair in a slick, streaming curtain. The shower spray is hot enough to burn, yet she doesn't move to make it colder. Simply stands there, feeling it slip over her skin, liking the sting of pink flesh it leaves behind. Perhaps her body will melt, like wax on a heated candle, stripping her away until she is nothing. 

Even Faith doesn't know if there are tears mixed with the water. 

~~~~ 

She was not the only one in quiet contemplation that night. Somewhere, not so far away in the scope of the world, a dark figure was doing what he did best. Brooding. 

"It's helping the helpless, technically." Cordelia pointed out, looking down at the slip of paper in the mail. "Not as if you're the only one who can play hero once in a while. It might be good for me, toughen my coping mechanism." 

"What exactly needs coping with?" Wesley asked, bent over a translation. Not because it needed translating, really, but it was the closest that Angel Investigations had to busywork. And he needed the overtime. 

"Hello? My budget for the evening will not even be the rest of the guests' spare change. That takes a lot of coping." Cordelia looked offended that her dilemma hadn't been blatantly obvious. 

"I'll lend you money for a dress." Angel said, breaking the silence he'd been in for hours. Cordelia looked like a little girl at Christmas. The invitation for her to accompany David to a dinner had managed to excite and depress her at the same time. 

Lapsing back into silence, Angel was more like 'Mr Billowy Coat King of Pain' then Cordy and Wes had seen him in a while. They didn't know what to say, trusting that he was comfortable enough with them to speak up when he was ready. 

Until that happened, there wasn't much they could do. 

There was another envelope, unmarked. Cordelia looked at it carefully, letters without any writing on them weren't something she took lightly after some of the things she'd found in the mail. But it was too small to be a heart, too light to be plague-spreading dust. She tore the end of the white paper triangle open. There was a photograph inside. 

"Angel..." she said, looking down at the image. "You better come look at this." 

Breaking his quiet for the second time, Angel looked over, standing and plucking the photo out of Cordelia's hands. It had been taken outside their door, two pale forms on the dark background. Spike had his arms crossed, looking at the camera as if he didn't care very much about it but knew he'd look amazing anyway. Darla was wearing cat-eye sunglasses, posing like a starlet with her back to the camera, looking over one shoulder. 

"Darla." Angel turned the photograph over. He didn't understand what was going on, but he was going to find out. 

'Hey Dad! I had the bestest day today. Grandma took me to the fair and we had candyfloss sellers to eat!' Spike's handwriting, Spike mocking Angelus' sense of humor. Angel's jaw clenched, outside thunder cracked. It never rains but it pours. 

~~~~ 

"What's up girl? You look like death warmed over." Gunn said, concerned. Faith shrugged and put another box on his truck. 

"I'm coping." It was a truth she'd like to have believed. 

"Something happen?" he noticed that her little gold cross was gone. Faith's eyes misted up without her meaning them to and she nodded. Gunn put his hand out and touched her arm comfortingly. "You wanna talk about it?" 

"No." Faith shook her head and went to get another box. "I'm five by five. Give me two weeks and I'll be so chipper you'll think I'm snorting prozac." 

"Did you take out the vamps?" Gunn didn't want to press her but got the feeling Faith wanted to talk. 

"Can't. They work for that -" Faith put down a box, hard, the loud crash obscuring her words. "-ing law firm." she hated Wolfram and Hart. They had power over her. She killed Spike and Darla, and they would hurt Lindsey. 

"So? That place aint so hard to get into. Easy to crash their party." 

"I just can't, ok?" Faith had finished loading the boxes. She moved to go back inside the kitchen. 

Gunn watched her leave, contemplated following her, decided it wouldn't do any good. 

~~~~ 

Somebody, at least, was enjoying the night. Darla had lost Spike hours ago in some club or another, she'd shrugged it off and found herself a new companion. When her new friend had finally died, she'd found another. Darla thought this was great fun. 

Going to hell is not the same for demons as it is for people. The only comparison that could be successfully made was that of being locked in an amusement park. Sure, it's annoying that you can't leave, and that for all intents and purposes you're trapped in a prison, but it's not the end of the world. There had been lots of fun down there too. But Darla had a soft spot for this, the hunt, the chase, the kill. 

She missed her Angel. Not that simpering thing he'd been lately, but the one she'd pillaged Budapest with. Spike had heard through the grapevine – talk about an obscure mixed metaphor there – that Penn was dead. Darla felt like a faded prom queen, crossing out more names in the yearbook as time dragged by. It was a little depressing. The Master was long dead, Drusilla was missing in action, Penn was gone, Angel had turned all Jedi. At least there was still this. The kill. The feed. 

Oh, and Spike. She'd forgotten about him for a moment. 

This boy she was playing with was boring her. Darla thought she might get a girl next. They were softer on the tastebuds, usually. Blood in LA tasted different to the rest of the world. More chemicals. She needed something to happen. Vampires were very good at killing time, less good at waiting. 

If you need something done, best to do it yourself, Darla decided as the hapless young man she'd been dancing with fell to the ground. 

~~~~ 

"Hey, Faith." 

She looked up from the deep fryer, her face distrustful. "What now?" 

"You finish work at ten, don't you?" Gunn grabbed a corn chip from the stainless steel counter beside the girl and bit into it. It was a little limp, soggy from the moisture in the air. 

"Yes. I am going to go home after that. I am not going to go kill vampires, I am not going to fight the good fight. I am going to go home, relax in a bubble bath, and possibly read a comic book." Faith pushed her hair out of her eyes. 

"And that'll make you feel better, will it?" Gunn pressed. Faith sighed. 

"What do you care anyway?" 

"Well it's just that I know what'll make you feel better and you're not even gonna entertain the idea." 

Faith looked down at the hot grease of the kitchen appliances. Thought about a lot of things, none of which were sunny or happy. Then she looked back up. 

"Pick me up around the back?" 

~~~~ 

Spike was loitering. It was what he did best. Currently, he was leaning against the wall of a pornography store, his feet on the dirty sidewalk. Some street kids were arguing over whether to buy coffee or a hot dog a little further down the street. If he turned his head, he could look at the ample airbrushed chest of a painted actress on a mural, advertising a film with a silly title. A 36DD reminder of what happened to starlets that never got a break. 

One of the street kids got to her feet. She would have been pretty, if things had been different. She had nice eyes, and a strong chin. She walked over to Spike, desperation making her bold. 

"Can I have a dollar?" she asked him. Well spoken, good diction. A fallen rich girl then, like Cordelia. This one just hadn't had a dark avenger to catch her when she tumbled. 

"I don't know. Can you?" Spike asked. He was out of smokes. When he was done with this guttersnipe he'd go buy some. 

"I think you'll give me one." the girl reached into his jacket pocket and felt around for his wallet. Spike didn't move, letting her rummage. The girl had spirit, he had to give her credit for that. 

Her hand came back out clutching a crumpled bill, the only money Spike had on him. A twenty. 

"I don't suppose you have change for that?" Spike asked with a smirk. This was fun. 

"Nope." she smiled. "But if you come round the corner I'll make it worth your while." 

Oh, this was just too easy. Spike loved it when the food served itself up. 

Standing up from where he had been leaning, Spike followed her around the side of the building. The drawing of the adult film star stared blankly at the street. Nobody was close enough to hear the screams. 

~~~~ 

Lindsey McDonald, the only person in the entire city for whom 'vampire lawyer' wasn't just a tautology, was annoyed. He hated it when Holland made him work with any of the others, and when that other was Lilah he hated it even more. The woman was a leech. 

Lindsey wondered if there was a spell that could make her that literally. The thought of the woman as a slimy little creature to squelch underfoot was a comforting one. Lilah caught his distracted smile and glared. 

"Are you listening to me?" she snapped. 

"Yes." Lindsey sighed. "You want me to do the case outline, while you check prophecies." 

"Glad to see you're paying attention." Lilah said grudgingly. 

Lindsey hated it when he had to work with slimy little creatures. It occurred to him that, knowing this, working at Wolfram and Hart probably wasn't the best career choice. 

~~~~ 

Darla and Spike met up again as midnight ticked by. Neither of them apologised for losing the other, because neither were sorry for doing so. They decided to find some nests, see who else was in town. Having each other, and some lawyers, as company was wearing very thin. 

They were only on the second abandoned building when they ran into company. 

~~~~ 

Faith was having a great time. The vamps in LA were as vapid as most of the daytime citizens. It was easy, fun slaying. Her hair was matted with the combination of sweat and dust. She hadn't felt this alive in a long time. It was what she was made for, why she had been born at all. 

"You're damn good, girl." a young man with a baseball cap and a scar on his cheek complimented her. Faith grinned, her body pumping with adrenalin. She turned on her heel and dusted a charging attacker. 

"I should have persuaded you to come along a long time ago." Gunn told Faith when they hit a lull between packs of vampires. "I've never seen any human that fast." 

"I'm hungry." Faith didn't take praise very well. She got up and stretched her legs. "Got any food?" 

"Low-fat yoghurt." a girl with light brown hair offered. Faith laughed. 

"Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude. I just knew somebody once who liked low-fat yoghurt as a follower to vamp slayage." she explained. "And I was imagining her here. It was a funny image." 

"You're insane." the man with the scar told her. Faith shrugged. 

"Yeah, for some reason I get that a lot." 

~~~~ 

Faith and Gunn heard the screams as she walked him home. He hadn't wanted her to, but Faith took 'no' for an answer even less well then she took praise. With stakes in hand, they ran in. 

This was what she was built for. 

There were fourteen demons, huge great ugly things with all kinds of bad smell coming off them. There skin was a grey-green color that turned the stomach even without the smell to go along. They were hard to kill, too, Faith got goop all over her before the first went down. 

"Get them to safety!" Gunn called to her as he fought off two more, flicking his head towards two human-sized figures crouching in the corner. Faith nodded and ran over. 

She saw who they were same time they saw who she was. Darla made a break for it, Faith ignored her. She hated Spike more, although not by much. Pinning him against the wall, Faith leant in close. 

"You think I won't kill you, Spike? Think you're too important? Nobody can see me right now. Nobody knows where I am." Spike was reminded of when Buffy had similarily pinned him in the Bronze. Slayers were maniacs, that had to be the explination. "And the homing beacon they put in you to keep you safe is currently recording you as trapped in the middle of a fight between some demons and some people who like to kill vampires. Nobody is going to avenge you." 

"You don't have it in you." Spike said, swallowing nervously. His feet weren't even touching the ground, Faith had him suspended, her hands on his shoulders. She laughed mirthlessly. 

"If you don't think I have it in me, you've obviously never met me." Faith let him drop and kicked him, hard. "By the time I stake you, you're gonna wish I'd just gotten it over with. You think I'm nice, Spike? You think I'm sweet little Faith?" She brought her booted foot in against his ribs, over and over. "I've tortured people who never did anything to me except get in my way." One rib cracked under the assault, then another. "And you think I don't have it in me to get you back?" 

"Backup! Finally!" Faith whirled at Gunn's cry. A familiar silhouette was standing in the doorway, sword in hand. There were still seven of the demons left alive, Faith had completely forgotten where she was. 

She ran for it, vowing to herself that next time she'd skip the Doctor Evil impression and just stake the peroxided vampire before her other problems could intrude. No way in hell she was hanging around for a reunion with Angel. 

Darla watched in the shadows as Faith dashed past, then as Angel and Gunn made short work of the demon horde – well, hordette, less then twenty wasn't enough to count as an entire horde. She watched as Angel noticed Spike in the corner, looked down at his sword, stained with thick black demon blood already, and turned away from the beaten vampire to talk to Gunn in hushed tones. 

Darla grinned. Angel, unlike Faith, really didn't have it in him to kill Spike. It was likely he wouldn't kill Darla again either. And that meant they had power over him. 

~~~~ 

Not so far away, in a basement, Xander was contemplating painting the walls a lighter shade. Wasn't that supposed to give an illusion of space? 

"I'm thinking of getting back into vengence." Anya spoke up from the bed. She always claimed the bed when she was visiting, holding the belief that beanbags weren't a sensible invention. Xander broke out of his idle thoughts. 

"I told you before, I don't want you going back into that stuff." 

"When did you tell me? We've never discussed this before." Anya looked annoyed. Xander blinked. 

"Oh, in a dream. I must have dreamt you said that." 

"You dream about me?" the annoyance crumbled away. "That's so... disturbing. And you don't have a say in what I do. You're just the boyfriend. You don't own me." Anya got up and stalked up the stairs. Xander sighed and leaned back against the beanbag. 

"That's me. Just the boyfriend." he muttered. "Just Xander." 

~~~~ 

"I was thinking today." Faith looked up at Lindsey. She was half-lying, half-sitting on his lap, her legs stretched out on his couch as he sat at one end. He was playing with her freshly washed hair. Vampire Slayers learn fast which shampoos get dust out best. 

"What about?" 

"You're dead, but you might as well be alive. When I was in the coma, I was alive, but I might as well have been dead." 

Lindsey smiled, tracing his fingers down her smooth cheek. Faith pretended to chomp at the fingers. 

"Heyyy, careful there, I don't have enough to spare any." Lindsey joked. 

"B's not the only one anymore." Faith said to herself, before remembering Lindsey couldn't hear the thoughts she didn't vocalise. Sometimes she forgot that, he seemed to follow her sometimes erratic wavelength very well. "She's not the only Slayer who's boinked the undead." 

"Have you talked to her lately?" Lindsey went back to twining his fingers through her damp locks. 

"I think Buffy and I have parted ways." Faith shrugged, no mean feat when lying down. "I can't imagine how we'll end up seeing each other again." 

"Life takes odd turns sometimes." Lindsey pointed out. Faith had to agree. 

~~~~ 

"Faith was there." 

Wes and Cordy exchanged a look. When Angel was in silent moping mode, anything he did end up saying was likely to be of the despressing. After a beat Cordelia finally gave in and replied. 

"Where?" 

"Tonight. When the demons attacked Spike, and Darla I'm guessing. Faith was there. She ran off when I arrived." 

"Working with the demons or working with Spike?" Wesley was interested now. He wasn't looking forward to another run-in with Faith, the last two times he'd seen her had proved to be ... memorable. 

"I don't know." Angel's brow furrowed. "Somehow I think we're going to find out." 

~~~~ 

Spike was tied to a chair. He wasn't happy about this. Frankly, he was really tired of being restrained with ropes and the like. 

"Uh, Darla, pet, feel like explaining what the hell is going on now?" 

She was bent over a small fire, throwing herbs into the flame. Spike was very cold, the warehouse they were currently in was drafty. Darla looked over. 

"You gave me an idea. The girl wants revenge? Who better to educate us on exactly what that means then a vengence demon?" 

Spike relaxed. Would it really have been so hard of Darla to tell him that twenty minutes ago? 

"Good luck. I know the bint who used to do that. She's very retired." 

"We'll see about that." Darla chanted an incantation. A thin female form stepped out of the shadows. 

"You called?" 

Spike's eyebrows shot up. "Harmony?!?" 

Darla flicked her head towards the restrained Spike. "He rejected me. I demand revenge. You have to give me a wish." 

"Oh goody." the blonde girl looked very happy. "I was hoping somebody would ask me to do something to him." 

"You're a vengence demon now? When did this happen?" Spike asked. Harmony ignored him. Darla smiled at the ex-human, ex-vampire teenager, who unclasped a silver-and-blue necklace that was hanging around her thin throat. 

"You have to put this on." she explained to Darla. "Isn't it beautiful? It reminds me of the one from Titanic. I bet the guy in that movie never would have cheated on his girlfriend, or staked her when she wasn't expecting it." Harmony glared over at Spike. He tried to look charming and inoffensive. "Did you ever see Titanic?" she asked, turning back to Darla. 

"No. I was... away when it was released." Darla said, touching the large, dark stone lightly. "So what do I do now?" 

"Just wish." Harmony shrugged. "You only get one, though, sorry. Time budgeting and all." 

"I only need one." Darla smiled, her evil-yet-innocent grin. "I wish Angelus was free." 

~~~~ 

"Cordelia!" Angel cried – it was more a scream then anything else, but she just couldn't think of Angel screaming. That didn't happen, just like bunnies with fangs and her father with no money. 

Cordelia ignored the part of her brain pointing out she'd seen both of those things. 

Looking up from her fashion magazine, Cordelia crossed her fingers that he had just noticed the not-very-subtle hints for a raise she'd put in the margins of the account book, and was angry at her. That was a best-case scenario. 

"Cordelia!" he screamed again from the other room. "Run!" 

Ok, no longer in the realms of best-case scenario. Cordelia didn't have to be told twice. Kicking her high-heels off, she ran with the determination that only comes out of sheer mortal terror. Wesley was at the library. She'd go find him. 

Crying from fear and exhaustion, Cordelia ran until her feet felt like they were bleeding. It had to be Angelus. Somehow, Angelus was free. 

The corner of Cordelia's mind that was still sixteen years old decided she really, really didn't want to know what Angel had been up to that might have freed Angelus. The rest of her mind was too busy getting her as far away as possible to comment at all. 

~~~~ 

"Did you hear something?" Lindsey looked up from the legal brief he was reading. Faith shook her head. 

"What do you think it was?" 

"Probably nothing." Lindsey looked back down. Faith shrugged and went back to painting her nails. 

~~~~ 

Darla and Spike sat in her apartment and waited. They were both getting a little bored, and planned to go kill some time (among other things) if something didn't happen soon. 

A clock ticked. 

"Read any good books lately?" Spike asked Darla. She shot him a death-stare. He took the hint and shut up. 

The clock continued to tick. 

The door burst off its hinges, both Angel and Angelus were fond of dramatic entrances. 

"Honey, I'm home." 

~~~~ 

Wesley had a crossbow. Cordelia had a stake. They both had crosses. They were both very afraid. 

The front room looked fairly undamged. A pile of papers was fanned across the floor, but Cordy thought she might have done that during her escape. There was a smell of burnt meat. Wesley thought he might well throw up, once they were out of danger. 

Motioning for the young woman to stay back, Wesley very, very carefully moved towards the half-open door, pushing the gap wider with his crossbow. He tensed. Cordelia raised her stake, ready to kill anything that jumped out. 

"Angel?" Wesley sounded surprised. "Cordelia said that…" 

The woman herself pushed past him and into the room. Angel was sitting against the wall, a dark bruise blooming under one eye. His breathing was shallow. 

Hang on… breathing? 

Cordelia moved closer slowly, hesitantly. "Angel, are you ok? What happened?" 

"He's free." the words were barely through his lips before the fight to stay conscious ended and he slumped down. 

~~~~ 

Faith was asleep. She looked so fragile, so young, when her eyes were closed. Lindsey could have watched her sleep for hours. 

The smell of blood made him move, however. Not just a little blood, a lot of blood. From downstairs. 

He contemplated waking Faith. She was the Slayer, after all, and this was no doubt related to vampire activity. He just couldn't bring himself to wake her. This must be what people meant about love being the most irrational emotion. Letting a vampire Slayer sleep through a vampire attack was fairly high on the stupidity meter. 

Instead he went down on his own, ready to put on his own game face if he needed to. He disliked it, it felt like being inside someone else's skin. Feeling out of place behind your own expression is an odd sensation. Darla, Spike and Angel – no, Angelus – were making a mess out of the seer from one of the other apartments. A big mess. 

They all sensed him at the same moment, looking over. It took a lot of strength of will not to run. Away from, or towards, the group, Lindsey wasn't sure, but he didn't do either. 

"Four is a much better number for a coven then three, wouldn't you agree?" Angelus asked him conversationally, sauntering over. Lindsey wondered at how differently Angelus carried himself to Angel. As if he didn't have a care in the world. Which, Lindsey supposed, he didn't. "What were you planning to do with that stake, Lindsey?" 

He hadn't even realised that he'd hidden the short piece of wood behind his back. His hand clenched around it. 

"You can't kill me." Angelus was in close now, speaking softly into Lindsey's ear. Lindsey couldn't move. He thought for a moment about the last time Angel had been this close to him. Could Angelus smell his fear like Angel had? "I saved your life." 

"Angel saved my life." Lindsey said, finally finding his voice. He didn't think much of the soul-ridden version of the vampire, pretty much hated him, but credit where credit was due. 

"You really believe that?" Angelus' lips were almost touching his ear now. Lindsey could smell the blood on them. "I don't think you do. I think you know, deep down, that it was me. I think you want to come with us more then you know how to say." 

Lindsey closed his eyes. Yes, yes it was true. The thing inside him that had clawed for release since he'd opened his eyes with Angel's blood on his tongue was screaming now. It would be bliss to give in, to let the game face become his true face. 

But Faith was asleep upstairs. She didn't have the faintest notion of all that was good about her. And she would never believe it from anyone ever again if Lindsey left her now. 

So he turned his face away and walked back towards the elevator. He couldn't kill Angelus, and didn't really want to analyse the reasons for that. But he could walk away. 

He went to wake Faith. Wesley and Cordelia probably needed their help. If they were still alive at all. 

~~~~ 

Buffy felt good. She was wearing new shoes, something that had always given her a buzz as a child. The charm had never really faded from it, and she still got a little thrill. Joydrop were gonna be at the bronze, their CD had only been like the soundtrack to her life lately. All in all, things were on a pretty even keel for a change. 

She knocked on Tara's door. Buffy was doing her utmost to get to know the other student, someone that important to Willow should at least fit somewhere into Buffy's life. The three of them were going to go out to the show tonight, kind of a girl-bonding thing. But not in a gay way. Well, not entirely. Buffy was kind of the odd one out in that respect. Even if Riley had been in the area, bringing a boyfriend along defeated the purpose of girl night. At least this time she had a reason for going solo. 

The fairy lights in Tara's room always reminded Buffy of the ones Faith had put up in her motel room for Christmas. "'Tis the season – whatever that means". The memory made Buffy think for a moment, try to imagine what her own personal Tyler Durden was getting up to. That had been the Christmas when it snowed. She and Angel had been together then – or had that been when they were on the break? Between Riley being of the not here and memories of Angel, Buffy was really starting to feel like a third wheel for the girl night outing. 

Oh well. She'd give Faith a call sometime soon, for sure. And at least there were the new shoes. 

~~~~ 

"The prophecy must have been sooner then we expected." Wesley volunteered. Cordelia and Angel both gave him a look. He sighed and slipped his glasses back up his nose. "All right, so it was reaching. What else could have caused it?" 

"Perhaps a spell Darla and Spike did." Angel said, resting his head in his hands. He'd forgotten how exhausting being mortal could be. 

"Yes, yes, you could be right." Wesley nodded. "I'd have to check some books, but –" 

"Well we don't have time to check books, Wes. Angelus is free." Angel said, trying to stand. Cordelia pushed him back down. His whole body hurt. Angelus hadn't hung around long, but it had still been long enough to leave his good side a lot worse for wear. 

"That's it! He's free. Literally." Wesley said, nodding as the theory solidified in his mind. Cordelia sighed. 

"Sorry to interrupt the really fascinating exposition and everything, but ok, we know he's free. Now what? How are we going to find him?" 

"I know how he thinks." Angel said, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles and trying to clear his head. "I can probably track him." 

"So if you were Angelus, where would you be heading?" Wesley said, his expression shaping into 'time to play rogue demon hunter'. 

Cordelia and Angel look at each other silently for a beat, each one seeing the fear there. Then they both turned to Wesley. 

"Sunnydale." 

~~~~ 

They ran into Faith and Lindsey outside the building. 

"What the hell is going on?" Faith was vocal about her confusion. 

"Long story." Angel said, resting on Cordelia and Wesley as they walked to the car. 

"Angel and Angelus have seperated." Wesley explained. 

"Ok, maybe not that long." 

"Where are you going?" Lindsey asked, the two of them following after the three members of Angel Investigations. 

"Sunnydale." Cordelia turned to look at them, then sighed pragmatically. "I just know I'm going to regret this, but you wanna come along?" 

"This is wicked weird." Faith said, in a shining example of stating the obvious. When they were on the road, squished in as five adults will always be in a normal sized car, she turned to Lindsey. 

"Hey, Lind, gimme your phone. I'll give B the heads up on what's coming her way." 

~~~~ 

The concert had been just what Buffy needed, fun. She'd still been talking about it with Willow when they got back to her house, which was quiet. 

"Hmm. Mom must be out." Buffy said with a shrug, taking her coat off. It was almost disturbing to think of her mother as having a life. The answering machine light was blinking. Two new messages. 

Beep. 

"B, I really really really hope you get this message. Get the hell out of your house. Get to somewhere Angel's never been invited into. I'm on my way there with Cordelia and Wesley and Lindsey and Angel but until I'm there, if you see Angel then don't go up to him. Stab him with something pointy. I know this is making no sense but you gotta trust me. Get out of the house right now." 

Beep. 

Buffy and Willow both turned to leave the house, grabbing their just-discarded coats. There would be time to ask questions when they were somewhere safe. 

The second message began and Buffy turned back to look at the small white box next to her phone, an expression of something between dread and grief on her face. 

"Hey Buff. Can't wait to see you again. Miss me?" a pause, a lack of sound crowded with a million subtle variations on the theme of terror. "If Lindsey's listening to this message, I'd just like him to know that unfortunately we've found another applicant to fill the vacancy." 

~~~~ 

The trip was intense. Lindsey didn't speak to Angel, Angel didn't speak to Lindsey, Faith didn't speak to anybody. 

"You know what this means, right?" Cordelia and Wesley were in the front, partly because Queen C would never, ever squash into a crowded back seat, but mostly because the two of them wanted to be as far away from the bad vibes as possible. It was like the family car ride from hell, while the vampires they were chasing were the family from hell. "It means that when we've gotten rid of Angelus and everyone that you and Buffy can actually be together, without you losing your soul or turning back time or anything." 

"She's got a boyfriend, Cordelia." Angel said quietly. "I just want to make sure she's safe, then I'll get out of her life again." 

"Oh give me a little credit here!" Cordelia turned in her seat so she could look at Angel. "How many times have you 'just made sure she's safe'? Seriously? Anyway, it's like fries and burgers." 

"Either that was an obscure insult I'll need to have explained to me or you've had too many visions and lost your mind." 

"Well, ok, it's like this. You know how you go to Burger King and they tell you you'll have a five minute wait on your burger because they don't have any without gherkins and there's no way you're going anywhere near something that contains a pickle dipped in vinegar?" Cordelia asked. Angel remained silent. "Ok, so I guess you don't know much about that. But anyway, they give you the french fries and the drink, to start on while you're waiting. And you like the fries, you really do. They're yummy, even with all the grease and the fat. Then you get your burger and, pfft, forget the fries. You get my point?" 

"Uh, no." 

"You're the burger! Whoever Buffy's doing the mambo with is just french fries." 

"I never thought being compared to a slab of cowflesh would be so comforting." 

~~~~ 

"I don't like this. I don't like this at all." Anya vocalised the only thought any of them could form. "I want this to stop now please." 

"Couldn't he be somewhere else? Hiding out perhaps?" Giles tried, taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes. They were all in his living room, Willow and Tara had reversed any invitation Angel had there. 

"And I fought with him. I walked away. I didn't know I was never going to see him again." Anya was wringing her hands. Willow glared at her. 

"Don't say that. We're going to see him again." 

"Yes, but he'll be dead, and I can't be in love with a dead person because it would smell." 

"We don't know Xander's dead." Buffy was pacing. She always paced when she was trying to solve a problem that was too big to address sitting down. 

"Yes we do. You all wanted him to babysit Spike, so the basement wouldn't have been safe. They came in and killed him and hid the body and now I don't have a boyfriend." 

"Anya, can you do something other then worry?" Buffy didn't ask so much as order."Will, can you get an orb of Thessula, just in case?" her voice was calm, but the calm had a dangerously ragged edge. 

"Ok, sure. I'll go to the magic shop and pick one up." 

"No, he knows you. I'll go." Tara spoke up. Buffy nodded. 

"Right." It was early in the day, the heat of the sun making them all just that little more stressed, on top of everything else. "Make it two." 

Tara nodded and left, her footsteps fading into the distance fast as she hurried. 

The silence fell like muddy water, choking any words they might have said to reassure each other. Angelus, who had haunted their nightmares for years, was back. Xander was gone. There was nothing to say. 

~~~~ 

Buffy opened the door, stake in hand. Faith was standing there, holding her own Mr Pointy up in a mirror image of Buffy's pose. They exchanged a tight smile at that, then Buffy stepped aside to allow the congregation outside entry. Wesley, looking exhausted from driving, Cordelia, looking much as Cordelia always looked. 

"Come in Lind." Faith said, standing by the door. Buffy had to jump out of the way as a blanket with a person under it came through the door quickly. 

"Is there time for an explination?" Buffy asked, raising an eyebrow at the man she'd last seen as a human. 

"Spike and Darla have been busy." Lindsey said, trying his best to look non-undead. 

"Darla is way dead. I saw her shuffle off this mortal coil, oh, quite a while ago. And you told me you dusted Spike." Buffy said, turning to Faith. Lindsey saved his girlfriend from a potentially horrible situation. 

"The law firm I worked for can raise beings from hell. I lost my hand when Darla was brought back." No reason to go into specifics on that one. Abridgement for the sake of brevity. 

"Angelus is free. But I suppose you knew that already." Willow came over. Faith did her best not to shrink away from the redhead's gaze. Wesley nodded in reply. 

"I'll be back in a minute." Cordelia smiled at the Scoobies, walking back out into the courtyard area. Her voice drifted back inside on the breeze. "Will you just come in already? Oh please don't tell me you're still going to brood. Get in here or.. or.. just get in!" 

She walked back to the door, dragging an unwilling companion with her. Buffy, already feeling dazed from everything else that had happened, felt that she might faint. 

"Angel?" 

Before she could do anything, though, the phone rang. Anya picked it up hesitantly. 

"Hello?" 

"Isn't it just heartwarming? The gang's all together again." 

Buffy picked up the extension as the voice continued. 

"Oh, the gang's not all there, are they? Now who could be missing..." 

Buffy looked in incomprehension between the telephone and Angel, who was explainging what had happened to Giles. Angelus continued to speak. 

"Like this game, Buff? Who should I make the next contestant? How about Rupert... oh wait, I've already tortured him. Your little witch, perhaps?" 

Buffy stayed silent, praying Angelus would let something slip. 

"You want a clue? I know you do. I've been inside your dreams, your body. I'm kind of like Faith, when you think about it. I've been wondering if I was picking on the wrong Slayer the whole time." 

The line went dead. 

Buffy turned back to the others. 

"I want an explination and I want it right now." 

~~~~ 

"We'll do a sweep of all the places they might be." Buffy said, glad to get into attack mode. Attack mode was clear, with no confusion. Fight, kill, celebrate victory. The rest of her life at that moment was anything but clear. Clarity was needed. Killing some vampires was a ticket to clarity. 

"Wait, Buffy. Angelus mentioned Faith. She might be a spy for him." Willow said with a glare towards the dark haired Slayer. 

"We don't have time to be suspicious." Lindsey snapped. "Some of us don't like each other. We'll quarrel later. For now, what's the plan?" 

"Who are you to talk? What do we know about you, Lindsey?" Willow was on a roll. "I'm not big on the vampire trustin'. Plus you're with this skanky evil person." 

"Willow, I'm on your side. If you don't want me to help Xander, fine." Faith was getting irritated. 

"Angelus has a point. You're a lot like him. He tortured a Watcher… what have your hobbies been lately, that we know about? Hmm... well I'll be darned, torturing a Watcher." 

"Will, this isn't helping." Buffy sighed. 

"I'm just saying, her past sets a precedence for trying to raise Angelus, and she's like a female version of him anyway. Trying to kill Xander used to be a feature of her personality. Why on earth are we trusting her?" 

"She's being more helpful then you are right now!" Buffy snapped, turning back to her notepad, scribbling out a plan of attack. Willow shut up. 

"Hang on. Why did he mention me anyway?" Faith wondered. 

"To make us fight." Buffy pushed her hair behind her ears. It fell back down. She scraped it back into a ponytail. 

"No, he'd assume we'd do that anyway. There had to be another reason." Faith was silent for a moment. "I think they might be at my old apartment." 

"Wouldn't they have to be invited in there?" Buffy asked. Faith shook her head. 

"It's not a dwelling place for the living anymore. It's abandoned." 

"We'll try there then." Buffy stood up. "Lindsey, Faith and I are going to check it out. Willow, when Tara gets back I want you two to get ready to cast a re-souling. Nobody leaves, and nobody comes in unless it's with one of us. Agreed?" 

They all nodded. Buffy picked out a few pieces from the weapons pile and headed towards the door. As she passed Angel she stopped and turned to him, kissing him hard. It was the first time she'd touched him since he'd come through the door. It was all too confusing. 

"We'll be back as soon as we can." she promised. 

~~~~ 

Faith had been right. They were hiding out in her old apartment. They could see the lights on from street level, the ragged, rotted remains of curtains drifting through the broken window. Faith shivered. 

"Assuming Xander's alive, it'll be one on one." Buffy felt better when she was in charge. Faith and Lindsey nodded. 

"I'll take Spike." Faith volunteered. She had one helluva score to settle. Buffy nodded once. 

"Lindsey, you take Darla. I'll get Angelus." 

Lindsey shook his head. 

"He's got a personal score against you. Darla's got one against me. It makes sense not to play their enemies right into their hands. You can take Darla easily and then come fight Angelus with me... I don't think he'll kill me before that." 

"All right." 

"What if Xander's not ok?" Faith asked. It was a thought almost too strange to vocalise. The Xanders of the world weren't supposed to die. 

"We'll burn that bridge when we come to it." Buffy said, looking up once more at the spill of light and then walking towards the entrance. 

~~~~ 

Giles was pouring himself a brandy. Willow startled him. 

"Willow, you startled me!" Giles jumped, then looked down with annoyance at the spilled alcoholic beverage. 

"Sorry." she was whispering. "Giles, this isn't an orb of Thessula. I don't know what this is. Tara brought it." 

"Well perhaps she was mistaken at the magic shop. All these little devices, they all look similar." 

"No, because they keep them behind the counter. She would have had to ask." Willow looked down, her eyebrows doing their best to meet in the middle of her forehead. The little sphere of bubbled glass looked somehow tainted, the refracted light wrong in an undefined way. 

"Well, don't do anything with it, give it back to her. We'll wait and see how Buffy manages and then think about this later." 

Willow nodded, still looking confused and betrayed. 

~~~~ 

The three vampires turned at the sound of the door opening. Xander was lying on the bed, his condition making Faith's memory flash the sight of Lindsey when Darla and Spike had finished across her mind. His coloring was a little better then Lindsey's, which gave her hope. 

Darla went one way, Spike the other. Buffy and Faith charged off, light and dark blurs of speed as they followed their quarries. 

"They're so stupid." Angelus said derogatorily. "Even animals know that a pack is stronger and safer then fighting alone. You here to fight me, Lindsey?" 

Lindsey gave him a nod, staying by the doorway. Sounds of fighting came from outside and from the left. Spike had jumped through the window, Faith diving after him like a ballet dancer. But in here, there was no fighting, not yet. A standoff. 

"Then I guess you're as stupid as Darla and Spike." Angelus's features vamped out unexpectedly. Lindsey debated whether to shift his own features and decided to remain in human form for now. "You've gone good then? I'm so disappointed. You could have been like a son to me." 

Angelus prowled in closer. Lindsey held his ground. A good lawyer knows when to attack and when to let the opposition become secure. Lindsey was a damn good lawyer. Whether he could hold his own as a vampire was yet to be seen. 

"Nobody said I'd gone good." 

"Sure you have, Lindsey." Angelus said conversationally. "You and Faith probably go to 'I tried to be evil and just didn't have the balls' anonymous meetings. I wonder if they have those in LA." 

"Just because I haven't done anything recently doesn't –" 

"If you're not part of the problem, Lindsey." Angelus cut him off. He was up close to Lindsey now, intimidating his fledgling. Letting him smell Xander's blood all over his clothes. "You're part of the solution." 

~~~~ 

Spike was no match for a vampire Slayer. He knew that already, but his sense of pride wouldn't let him admit it. Slayers had a tendency to whop his ass. 

Faith was pummeling three kinds of bruise all over his body. Spike was beginning to understand what she'd meant by him wishing she'd just get it over with. Being pinned to the ground while an insane young woman beat you senseless wasn't much fun. 

"I just wanted to have a normal life for a change. I just wanted to live quietly, one day die quietly, and have a long nice nap in my nice QUIET grave." Faith punctuated every few words with a punch. Currently she was working on his left leg. The feeling was almost entirely gone from the limb. 

"To be fair, Slayer, you came looking for me." 

"Shut up shut up shut up!" Punch punch punch punch punch punch. Spike really regretted opening his mouth. 

"You're not reformed and you're never going to be. Evil's in your blood, you stupid cow." Spike dodged a kick to his head. 

"Shut up!" Faith screamed, moving on and attacking the already-painful skin on Spike's torso. Raising her stake, she brought it down into his chest with a Slayer's force behind the blow. 

"You missed." Spike grinned. Faith smirked. 

"Meant to." 

~~~~ 

Buffy was getting bored. Darla was the kind of vampire she hated most – stupid, mouthy and brutish. Usually she killed them right away, but Darla was faster then that type usually were. Parry, dodge, kick, punch, jump back, kick, parry. It was challenging, and made Buffy's head clear a little, but she just wanted to dust Darla and get it over with. 

Darla jumped at her and Buffy sidestepped. Buffy dropped into a low roundhouse kick and Darla kicked her in the chin. Buffy punched up and clipped Darla's cheek. Same old, same old. 

Somehow the female demon managed to get a hold of Buffy's stake, disarming her. 

"Now who's got the power, Buffy?" Darla taunted, stepping out of range of the punch Buffy aimed at her. "I've got the big stick and you're just a helpless little girl." 

"Oh, please. I took psych, and I know for sure that my stake is not some kind of Freudian symbol for a phallus." Buffy put her hands on her hips. "Therefore, to be denied my stake does not castrate my power." she jumped up in a high kick, knocking Darla back. She stumbled but regained her footing, grinning at Buffy. 

"Yes, but it's much harder to kill me without it, isn't it?" 

"Whatever. You bore me." Buffy jumped again and Darla stepped back, expecting another high kick. Instead, Buffy put one ankle either side of Darla's neck and twisted to the right, snapping the vampire's neck. She crumbled into dust. 

"Flake." Buffy said, brushing dust off her sleeves. "Honestly, I could teach the world a thing or two about Girl Power. Stake as phallus. What a crock." 

She ran off to help Lindsey, hoping he was doing ok on his own. 

~~~~ 

"You told me once about your childhood." Angelus whispered into his ear. Lindsey's hand tightened around the stake in his pocket. It was small, and sharp, and made him nervous. Angelus could just as easily use it against him. "Angel pretended to sleep, but I was listening. I was always listening when you spoke." 

Lindsey turned his head to look at Angelus. "Is that a fact?" 

"Don't you believe me?" 

"I'm not sure trust is something I should consider right now." 

Angelus laughed. It was a chilling sound. "You're smart. Sorry that I called you stupid before. And sorry about the hand. Angel gets so testy when people hurt his friends. It's really out of my control... well, it used to be." his was just like the serpent's must have been when Adam bit the apple in Eden. 

"So now that you're free, why not just leave and forget about them all?" 

"Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey. I would have thought someone like you would understand the concept of revenge." 

"Maybe I do." Lindsey said shortly. Angelus laughed again. 

~~~~ 

Spike screamed again. Faith's mouth was set in an expression somewhere between a grin and a wince. Her legs were getting pins and needles, the pressure of Spike's body across them. She'd been playing this little piggy. 

"And this little piggy-" Crack. "had roast beef." 

"Get it over with you stupid bint." Spike howled as she broke another of his fingers. 

"Sorry William old chum. I guess that pesky evil you kept saying I had in me is shining through. I'd forgotten how much fun torture could be." 

"Argh!" Spike hated Faith. He hated Buffy. He hated Darla, he hated Angel, he hated Angelus. He hoped Dru had inadvertantly met her end somewhere along the line so that he could patch things up with her when this horrible girl let him die and go to hell to lick his wounds. "Stop. For the love of God stop." 

"Love of God? Doesn't it hurt for you to say blasphemy like that?" Faith laughed, snapping his last finger, standing, and reaching into her back pocket, drawing out a flick knife. Spike whimpered. 

"Did you know, Spike," Faith said conversationally."That the people of Sparta used to put girl babies outside to kill them? And if they survived a night out in the cold, they would be kept? It sure would suck being a girl Spartan. I bet they grew up to have all sorts of issues." 

"I thought they did that to all babies." Spike thought his lung might be bleeding. Kind of a moot point, since he'd be dead soon. Not soon enough though. 

Faith shrugged. "Whatever. I gotta do some more reading. Anyway, I was just thinking. The Greeks, they were real big on revenge. I figure I should leave you with something to remember what happens when you hurt people I care about." 

Leave him with something? So she was going to let him live? 

"Now, which arm was it they put the neutralising chip in?" Faith asked, her tone nonchalant. Spike tried to scoot away from her. Faith smiled and stepped in closer. 

~~~~ 

Wesley looked up from the copy of the New Yorker he'd been pretending to read. "That's it!" 

"Do you realise how annoying it is when people say that?" Cordelia asked. 

"Angel's not the vampire with a soul in the prophecies." 

Angel looked over at his friends. "What do you mean, Wes?" 

"He can't be. His human soul is, well, human now, and Angelus is a vampire without a soul, just like all the others. But there is another vampire fighting for good." 

"Lindsey." Angel caught where Wesley's train of thought was heading. 

"He's bad though, right?" Cordelia asked. "And if he's a vampire, then how'd he get a soul?" 

"Perhaps being turned by Angel is different to being turned by a vampire without a soul." Giles speculated, joining in the conversation. It beat listening to Anya rant and rave or watch Willow sit and look at Tara as if Willow was a puppy who'd been kicked. 

"No. I don't buy it." Cordelia shook her head. "Even if lawyer guy had been turned into a vampire with a soul, I'm guessing Faith is not an example of abstinence. He'd have long lost it. Trust me, Lindsey's gonna turn out to be a big bunch of bad news in a suit." 

~~~~ 

Lindsey's features vamped out and he growled, low in his throat, at Angelus. 

"Smells like Faith's doing some serious damage out there to your friend Spike." 

Angelus shrugged. "You want to go help her? You've never killed, have you Lindsey?" 

"Not since I was a vampire." he admitted with a shrug. Angelus patted him on the shoulder. 

"That's the kind of thing I like to hear." 

Lindsey's head movements were small and quick as he kept his eyes on Angelus. A good lawyer always knows exactly where the opposition is going to go next. 

This was the way the world ends. Not with a bang, not with a whimper. With a choice. No matter which way he went at this moment, a world would end. 

It was just a matter of which world. 

The future stretched out in front of him. Hot, wet, and red. Fearless. With Angelus, there would be no intimidation. He would be a winner. Nobody to take away his house. Nobody to read his thoughts and check for treason. No death, that horrible, incomprehensible fact of life that had come steal his big brother, the one he'd hoped to grow up to be just like when they were kids, playing under the apple tree out back. 

No Faith. 

His sole hand slipped out of his jacket pocket, the tiny stake (no more then a splinter really) concealed in his hand. He put his hand against Angelus' chest and for a fraction of a second the vampire's eyes flashed in triumph. Then the wood connected with the muscle that was his heart. 

"I really, really don't like you, evil or not." Lindsey snapped, his face smoothing back into normal lines as Angelus crumbled. 

~~~~ 

"Xander! Are you ok?" 

"Hey, Buffy, I was wondering where you'd show." Even in this state, he could still joke. Angelus, Darla and Spike had obviously had their fun, but hadn't yet gotten around to turning the young man. 

Xander looked at the two figures behind Buffy. 

"Ok, please tell me Faith's good or we have a problem right now." 

"It's ok Xander." Faith was covered in blood. It made her look like an accident in a ketchup factory. 

"Oh good. When you're bad, I fear you... I feel I should point out that anything I say is a result of blood loss and exhaustion." Xander mumbled. Buffy smiled. 

"Ok, Xander Harris, time to get you some rest." 

"Not arguing with that." 

 

  



	4. Chapter 4

The water was cool, but the sand was warm. The ice cream was cold, but their interlocked hands were hot. Buffy was still getting used to that, the temperature of Angel's hands. It was like getting used to a parent with different colored eyes. The sun was the same brightness as their mood. 

"How did you know that this flavour would be so good? I thought vampires didn't do the food thing much." 

"Just intuition I guess." Angel smiled. Buffy was already smiling back, she'd been smiling nonstop for hours. Confusion had given way to a tentative kind of elation as she realised this was really, truly happening. 

Her icecream scoop perched atop her cone, having been ignored as she lost herself in Angel's eyes, dribbled down over her hand. She laughed and licked it off her fingers. 

"So what happens now?" she asked quietly. "We've got our whole lives ahead of us." 

"What do you want? Kids? A career?" 

"I've never thought much beyond surviving college." Buffy admitted with a sheepish grin. Angel put his arm around her shoulders. The hissing static sound of the surf was calming, not that anything could have made him feel anything but at that point. 

"Well then, you survive college. I'll go back to LA and do my best to help the helpless for a little while longer. Then, we'll take it as it comes." 

"Sounds good to me." Buffy smiled and leaned against him. "What about Faith and Lindsey?" 

"It's up to them. We could use them in LA, but I don't know what they'll do." 

~~~~ 

Faith loved red liquorice. She could eat it by the tonne. Chewing on a piece, she looked over at Lindsey, sitting up in bed next to her. 

"So what happens now?" 

"You asking yourself that or me?" Lindsey turned and looked at her. 

"Both I guess." Faith stretched her body out like a cat. "What happens now?" 

"We get in our painted minivan and drive around the country solving groovy mysteries." Lindsey suggested. Faith laughed. 

"Sorry Lind. Scooby comparison's already been done. But seriously, what do we do? You want to go back and work with Angel?" 

"No." Lindsey admitted. "I'd rather not see him again, to be honest." 

Faith nodded. She'd feel much the same way. "And Wolfram and Hart would eat you alive." 

"Literally." 

Faith thought about that and scrunched her face up. "Ew." 

"I second that ew." 

"We could get back to our roots and live in a trailer park." Faith kept her voice deadpan but couldn't refrain from giggling when Lindsey gave her a droll look. 

"Or not." he replied. "Here's my suggestion. We do that 'let tomorrow worry about tomorrow' thing again and just lie here for a while. We deserve some rest." 

"Ok." Faith agreed, snuggling in against Lindsey's shoulder. "Will you be here when I wake up?" 

"Only if you promise to dream about me." 

"I always do." 

~~~~ 

Giles handed Willow a mug of tea. She took it gratefully, giving him a small smile as their fingers touched. She looked very tired. 

"Why don't you try and get some sleep?" he asked. "You can stay here on the couch if you'd prefer not to go home." 

"I can't sleep." Willow shook her head. "I just keep wondering what's going on. What's going to happen." 

"I don't think anybody ever knows what's going to come. One of the best things about life, I'm told." 

"Well I like it better when we can read about it in your books and then stop it happening." Willow said with an unhappy pout. Giles smiled and stroked her hair, something he never would have allowed himself to do before this year. She'd grown so much, he felt like a proud father, watching his daughter blossom. 

Well, not exactly like a father. He found hair dye clownish and ridiculous. Willow wouldn't have red hair if she were his daughter. 

She sighed. "I just want to know what happens now." 

"I think we're all a little curious." Giles agreed. 

  



	5. A little word with two vowels

Faith is such a little word. Five letters, two of which are vowels. It is used to mean so many things. To lose it is to lose willpower, because without faith there is no reason to do anything. We believe in causes because life is simply a state of being. More then existence is needed to force our eyes open every morning. Willpower is simply having a faith so deep it offers sense and meaning in chaos. 

Faith and chaos seem to be terms that naturally fit together. When there is order, there is no need for faith. Trust is often equated with faith, but they are not the same thing at all. Trust is when you fall back and you ask your friend to catch you, being fairly sure that they will. Faith is when you don't have to ask, you know they'll break your fall. 

Faith, as a word, seems to contain a purity that even ideas like goodness or truth don't. Faith is the action of belief. Faith is the sensation of total, absolute trust, in our clumsy language that throws the ideas together as synonyms. 

Faith is also a name, and when used as such, it can hold within five little letters not only the concept of purity of belief, but every shade of emotion and experience that a body and mind can. 

As she looked in the little mirror, Faith stared back. The two vowels and three consonants contained a hell of a lot in that mirror. Purity wasn't a word that came to mind. But there was something in her eyes. This face in the glass had faith in something. 

Brown hair that she thought she might darken with cheap dye that would smudge her pillow and make her face look harder. Lips, mouthing along to a song on the radio. Eyes with little makeup, she'd given up on making the bruised look work and refused wholeheartedly to even contemplate the pornstar-sheen of pale pink glosses and blue shadows. The only paint on her face was a little clear shine on her lips, that had always been the easiest way to make her look like a teenager. 

Technically, she was one still, but was feeling less like it every day. The word woman no longer scraped against her personal identity with no hope of fitting. She might actually be a woman, eventually. 

She was Faith. The little word could easily contain everything she was, so she needed no second one. What would she take for it, anyway? The name of people who had made childhood a place of fear and pain for her? The name of a man who had loved her, cared for her, and then turned into a big snake and eaten a bunch of people? The name of the man currently in the town proper, buying a local paper and something for dinner? She was simply Faith, for now. Another name would join that when there was reason for it. 

They had stopped in a small town on the way to anywhere. The town was called Potential, which had governed their choice to rest here for the day. The motel was on the outskirts. Faith was currently examining herself, on the edge of Potential. She liked that. 

She'd promised Angel that she'd call him. He was staying in Sunnydale for a little while, and she was honestly planning to make good her promise. No matter what they decided to do, she owed him that much. Faith knew he harboured hopes that they'd come back to LA and work with him. It was an interesting future to contemplate. Atoning and fighting and all that. Hug and cry and learn and grow and possibly kill some demons while you're at it. 

It wasn't going to happen. Faith was fairly sure of that. Aside from the part where Lindsey hated Angel almost beyond articulation, she just honestly didn't think she had it in her to fight the good fight. Her and Lindsey both walked a fine, sometimes nonexistant line between right and wrong. A state of being sometimes justified with 'I'm only human' by characters in movies. Neither Faith nor Lindsey could claim that defence. 

It was pretty late at night, so she had the radio on low. She'd stayed in enough motels to know what level of volume would be tolerated. It was a country and western station, playing old songs about old loves. Faith had a soft spot for songs like that. Her Daddy had played them when she was little, dancing her around the living room. Even with all the other stuff, the bad stuff, that had happened, Faith still smiled a little at that memory. 

Sick of looking at herself in the mirror, Faith flopped down onto the bed, her chunky black boots kicking endboard and making a thudding sound. She hoped it hadn't been too loud. 

Her suitcase was at the end of her bed, where she always kept important things. She'd never had a suitcase before. It was kinda neat. Fitted everything she had in the world, with space for more. 

She glaned over at the radio as she heard her name, then smiled. Lots of sad songs had faith in them somewhere, because when the blackness gets ahold of your soul, faith's the first thing to get damaged. It's the last thing to go before you give yourself over to that despair, that evil, but it's the first thing to take a knock. Faith is a fragile thing. Faith is the strongest thing in the world. 

This was a nice song. Faith lay back, pillowing her head with her hands, and closed her eyes, remembering the feel of threadbare grey carpet under her childish feet, her father spinning her around the room. "Now I'll keep on believing, any way that I can..." Songs like this were always so lost. But that was a nice line. You have to keep on having faith, even if you find it in the weirdest places. 

Faith wondered if she'd ever stop being just Faith and become Faith with another name after it. She fitted perfectly into just the one name, but sometimes felt that it would still be better to own a second. She was half of Faith-and-Lindsey. She had no intention of marrying him, now or at any point she could visualise. He'd get bored of her soon anyway. But until then... shouldn't her name reflect who she was? "Faith McDonald" she whispered, trying the lilt on her tongue. She could buy a farm, e-i-e-i-o. 

Damn it, she was not going to be somebody's other half. Nobody was going to have power over her to the point where she made them part of her name. Her name was hers alone, the best name in the whole world. She was Faith. Five little letters, two of which were vowels. 

She was having fun, but this wasn't going to last. Slayers died young. How had Buffy once put it? The life expectancy of a zit. Lindsey was going to stay exactly the same forever. That didn't lay a very good foundation for anything. 

Ai is the Japanese word for love, or at least that's what somebody had told Faith once. A truck driver, a woman with greying hair, beefy arms and sunglasses that were throwbacks to the worst kind of seventies fashion. Faith had been running away from home one summer, she'd been ten maybe, and this woman had picked her up. Driven her all day, telling her things like what the Japanese word for love was, and how to make a fire without any dry wood. Faith had climbed down out of the comfortable little cabin at a rest stop and called her parents from the diner area, homesick for a place that she wouldn't have to climb down from at the end of the day. She'd gotten in a load of trouble, Mom had made her little firecracker turn black and blue, and her Daddy... but after it was over, and her back was healing up and all, he'd danced her around the living room, one of his old records on the player, women with peroxided hair and men with cowboy hats telling Faith all about a lover that left and a million other heartaches. And when the bruises and cuts had faded and Faith could almost forget them, she still remembered that Ai was the Japanese word for love. 

She'd write her name - at ten the school was still pretending they gave a damn if she could read or write, later on they couldn't give a damn, it was a good thing she'd learnt while they were bothering to teach - and the letters would all look so important. F, A, I, T, H. Faith. Her name. Five letters, two of which were vowels. They'd learnt about vowels at school, but Faith kept getting confused and writing Y down as an extra one. The teacher had, at first, been nice, teaching her with a smile. Later, more annoyed at this stupid girl's inability to understand, the smiles weren't there as she snapped at Faith that Y wasn't a vowel. It didn't matter when Faith wrote her own name anyway. F, A, I, T, H. Sometimes she'd capitalise it, F-a-i-t-h. And sometimes she'd write it fAIth, the Japanese word for love smack dab in the middle of her name. She had all the love of the world inside her, and her name proved it. 

Faith smiled as she lay on the hotel room bed. She'd forgotten that, the love thing. It had been one of her best kept secrets when she was little, but dreams fade most of the time. All the love in the world. Huh. Kids say the stupidest things. Probably didn't even mean love anyway, probably meant rhubarb or some crap like that. Did they have rhubarb in Japan? Faith had no idea. 

She was exhausted. Now that she was actually listening to her body instead of treating it like a slave to her whims, Faith was realising that sleep could be a nice thing. Dreams could be something more then nightmares. 

Her Daddy had a shed out back, sometimes he let Faith come down there with him if she was a good girl and sat quietly on the little stool in the corner. He kept his toys in there, big hunting knives and small, sleek knives and deadly carving knives. Sometimes she'd be allowed to touch one. Sometimes he made her touch them. Sometimes he wrote things on her with them, tracing the tip of the blade lightly across her young skin. When he was angry, those words would be written in red. Faith liked the way they looked, even if he always picked mean words to write. 

She'd liked the shed, watching her Daddy polish his toys. She wished she had some of her own, but she'd take what she could get. But the best thing was when Daddy put on his country records and danced with her. Even Mom would sometimes join in, when Faith was really little. 

She wondered what memories Lindsey had of his childhood, so like hers, so unlike that of anybody else she'd been around recently. Did he miss his parents or his siblings? Faith wasn't sure if she missed her family at all. There were some memories she liked, but she had memories of a lot of different places, names, faces that she liked. Didn't mean she missed them, or wished them back. 

Sitting up in bed, Faith began drawing in her notebook, which she'd left next to the bedside lamp when she'd gone into the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror. Words, faces, things from her life. Imagining futures for them. She imagined enough different presents, utterly unlike the real one. What harm could thinking of one little future do? How many times had she asked someone what would have happened, if things had been different? If she hadn't danced around the living room to old country records when she was young, would she be here now? 

They could go live in New York, in a little apartment that would catch the morning warmth but not the sun. The bed would smell like clean linen and happiness, there was a smell that Faith didn't know how else to describe. That's what their whole home would smell like. She'd get a job doing.. hm.. something or other. Maybe even continue a little vampire killing in her spare time. Lindsey could be a lawyer, it was the only thing Faith could imagine him spending his life on. Unlife. Whatever. She'd get a puppy, that had been something she'd wanted her entire life. They could call it Rover or something stupid like that. 

Faith stifled a yawn, scratching a birthmark on her shoulder. Giving the dog a cute name had been the final straw, really. It was too perfect, now she'd jinxed it ever happening. That was something her aunt Debra had taught her - never wish for anything or you jinx it. No apartment in New York for Faith and Lindsey. She'd stop imagining before she eliminated all possibility of happiness. 

Her eyelids were heavy, the slow songs on the radio lulling her back into the exhausted complacency of bedtime as a little girl. She wasn't a little girl anymore, almost a woman now even in her own head where people never grow up all the way. She'd sleep and pretend that her future was going to turn out perfectly. 

Her light doze was broken when Lindsey came back from town. He put the things he'd bought down quietly, turning off the overhead light. Faith smiled at him sleepily. 

"Hey there." 

"I didn't want to wake you." he said apologetically. 

"It's ok." Faith pulled the cover up around her. She'd fallen asleep in her shoes, again. Force of habit, when she was travelling on her own she always slept ready to leave at a moment's notice. "I like waking up to see you." 

"Go back to sleep, love. I'll still be here next time you open your eyes." 

"Promise?" Faith asked, closing her eyes dutifully. She sometimes puzzled over whether Lindsey used a little of that vampire hypnosis stuff on her when she wouldn't rest or eat or some other silly thing. Maybe she was just more mindful of things he said then she usually was of advice. 

"You know it." A lawyer's promise. That struck Faith as a little like crocodile tears, was that the saying? She was too sleepy to remember. Some sayings she knew though. Honour among thieves. Like her and Lindsey. She liked that one. 

"Night Lind." It was almost dawn, but that didn't have the same ring to it. 

"Night love." 

Faith fell asleep thinking about that word. Love. Four little letters, two of which were vowels. It can mean so many things. Jinx only had one vowel, so that meant love was stronger. She liked that. 

 

  



	6. Another Crisis

The water is cold against her hands as she tests the temperature, but only lukewarm as her body slides under the bubbled surface of the bath. She'd always had bad circulation, even as a little girl. Whenever Xander would comment on it, her childish face would take on the bored look of someone bored with defending themselves. "Cold hands, warm heart." Was a reply that usually did the trick. She had no idea if the saying was true. Buffy always told her she was a good-hearted person, but Buffy was biased. 

Lying back in the water, Willow sighed and closed her eyes. The sounds of life continuing as per usual were muffled downstairs. She'd lost track of how many days she'd been sleeping on Giles' couch. After about a week of it he'd asked her for God's sake to stop calling him that and use his first name. Willow had never seen him smile quite like he had as he said that, but she was willing to put money down that Jennifer Calendar had. Whether that whole line of thought was disturbing or not, she wasn't sure yet. 

Tara had asked her straight out. "Are you with him?" and Willow's heart had nearly broken. How could Tara possibly think Willow would cheat on her like that? She'd fought the urge to reassure her physically and simply explained that there were a lot of things she needed to think about, that the stuff with Angelus and Darla had left her shaken. She just needed a week or two to recover in a place she felt safe. This was the safest place in Willow's world. Near Giles - Rupert. He wanted her to call him Rupert. 

But she wasn't going to think of Tara now. That way led to bad icky horrible unsure thoughts. Willow had promised herself, after Oz, that she was never going to be hurt that much again, and being hurt by your main squeeze turning evil was a whole other ballgame. One she'd seen firsthand with Buffy and Angel years ago. Willow had no plans of letting her life go down that track, no matter how happy the ending that couple had gotten. 

Her thoughts swirling in a spiral like draining water, Willow had returned to her first idle musing. The muttered sounds downstairs. Anya and Xander had been bickering for a while now. If she closed her eyes and concentrated, Willow could pick up snatches of the conversation. She didn't know if it was just her normal good hearing or if she was using her witch thing unconsciously. 

"Buffy, you agree with me, don't you?" that was Anya's voice. 

"Oh I am so staying out of this conversation." Willow smiled at her best friend's tone of voice. She could almost visualise the scene, Buffy and Angel sitting side by side on the couch, Anya standing up in front of a seated Xander, Giles - Rupert - standing off to the side, looking bemused. Buffy was probably fussing over Angel's arm again, ever since he and Angelus had split he'd been learning about how to be human again. One thing he hadn't learnt fast enough was that humans can't sense when there's a thorny branch next to the garbage can when taking out the trash. The cut was minor, but Willow secretly thought Buffy might simply be enjoying fussing just because she was able to fuss. 

Willow always just sort of knew when there was a branch in the way. Maybe that was a witch thing. Maybe it was just a thing. 

Anya spoke again, her voice exasperated, as if she couldn't understand the argument at all. 

"I can't understand this argument at all. Menstruation is uncomfortable. Procreation is the way that people reproduce. You all fight evil, so I know you don't want the human race to die out. Why is my wish to reproduce so odd?" 

"Because you're a teenager?" Xander hazarded. Willow smiled, imagining the death-glare he would have earned for that. 

"What year was Angel born in? 1972, 71? He looks around that age." 

"Anya, you know Angel's a lot older then that..." Xander's voice trailed off as the penny dropped. "Oh, right." 

Willow laughed silently, lying in the cooling bathwater, her eyes still closed as she listened. Anya understood the concept of sarcasm? She was really going native. 

In the mental image of the room downstairs she'd constructed, Willow noticed a shape outside the window, carrying a newspaper and some shopping. Cordelia. Before that little addition could strike her as odd Anya spoke again. 

"Here comes Cordelia. Perhaps she will see my point." 

Sitting up in the bathtub abruptly, Willow stopped listening to the voices downstairs, the sloshing of the disrupted water drowing out anything they were saying. She'd been seeing the room, really seeing it, not just imagining what was happening. She'd seen Cordelia through the window. 

Pulling her clothes on without bothering to towel herself dry, Willow tried to decide if this was a happy moment or a weird moment. It was kind of happy-weird. It was a good skill to have, she guessed. It would have been less good if she'd been sharing a house with either couple downstairs. 

With that vaguely disturbing, vaguely voyeuristic thought, Willow went to join in the insane conversation. 

~~~~ 

Liquid steel, so hot it felt freezing to the touch. Temperature that extreme always blends into the other extreme. The liquid iron was running over other steel, so cold it scorched. Fire and ice, becoming one finally, reaching a state that was neither and both and something else again. On earth, a substance such as that would destory a human being, burning away even bone. Here, where the souls couldn't find escape through something simple as death, it left remains behind that were usually capable of a second round. 

Angelus was enjoying Hell. He'd never been there unchaperoned, and it just hadn't been the same with that revolting soul controlling everything and angsting up all the fun. Things didn't taste as good here, admittedly, like when humans have a cold. But there were so many other things to do, so many soft bits of flesh and so many sharp, shiny things to poke into that flesh. It was like performance art. 

Darla had snorted when he'd made that comparison, pointing out that he'd never actually seen performance art, had he? Which was true. She'd explained that it was never as interesting as Hell was, and far more likely to include flouncy clothing and silly choreography. 

Angelus was worried about Darla. She'd been quiet lately. 

"Does Mummy want to come play with the Puppy?" Willow asked, sitting next to Darla's chair and looking up with wide eyes. 

Darla didn't move to get up, stroking Willow's hair a little and smiling softly instead. She really cared about the redhaired girl, Angelus could tell. So much like Drusilla, and so different to the Willow he'd known. 

It had been a source of confusion, at first. How a Willow that wasn't *the* Willow existed. The girl herself had been no source of information, but luckily she wasn't alone. 

Puppy had been a wonderful source of information. Angelus was so good at pretending to be broody. Furrowed brow, pensive squint. His idiot double had actually believed the story he'd spun about Alcatha. Well, technically it was true, but that trip hadn't been as fun as this one. He'd put two and two together and worked out there was only one Hell for all the worlds. Or possibly many, many Hells, and sheer lucky coincidence had put them all in this one. Darla, Willow, Angel, Puppy and Xander. 

The thought of Xander made Angelus smile widely. Yes, he was really enjoying Hell. 

That train of thought made him reach a conclusion that he thought might offer some comfort to his sire. 

"He might just be in another Hell." he suggested. Darla shrugged. 

"Maybe." 

"Or they're torturing him and he's loving every moment of it." 

"Maybe." the disaffected tone annoyed Angelus. She couldn't be pining, could she? Not Darla, also known as so many serial killer monikers Angelus had lost count. 

"Chin up old gal. In a few more centuries down here it'll be next week where you're from and your lawyer buddies will work out what's happened. You'll be back up there before you know it." 

Angelus turned at the sound of the new voice. Xander didn't walk so much as slide, like a serpent in human form. Angelus liked his style, black and more black, with a little black for contrast. His voice was only half-sarcastic, because he too liked Darla immensely. It was hard not to. When she wasn't pining, few people could make the meat puppets cry out as she could. 

That reminded him. 

"Willow, you've caught Puppy again?" the stupid creature had a habit of dislocating his bones to get out of his chains. They always found him quickly, and punished him. That was the best part. They liked it when he escaped. 

"Yes." Willow nodded. "He's crying again. Big baby. The tears make the blood on his face all streaky, like a big candy cane." 

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Xander whispered softly into his ear. Angelus nodded. 

"We'll see you two later." With that farewell to Darla and Willow, Angelus turned and began to walk off. He could hear Xander walk over and plant a soft kiss on Willow's forehead before following. 

It was time for play. 

~~~~ 

The Willow on earth, the human-witch-sometime-hacker Willow, was glaring at the toaster. It kept burning her bread. Willow didn't eat burnt bread, it tasted like something left after a campfire went out. 

Buffy was standing next to her, also annoyed at the toaster. Xander and Anya had gone home, no doubt to have sex. Safe, protected sex, because the argument had been put off with a promise that they would talk about it when Xander had a steady job. Buffy and Willow had been talking about it before the toaster started playing up. They thought Xander would make a cute dad. With parents like that, though, the child certainly would have a unique way of speaking. 

Angel and Wesley were looking at that damn book again, the one they'd found when exploring the old school library with Gi-... with Rupert. Translating the last part of the scroll. Willow thought it was all sort of interesting. Too bad so many of their prophecies hinged on the vampire with a soul, last seen headed for the horizon. Well, where the horizon would have been if it had been day. 

Distracting herself from the toaster for a moment, Willow wondered what they would be up to right now. Driving, probably, turning a mental quest into a physical one. Faith would be behind the wheel, because Lindsey couldn't be. They would have woken up at dusk, an hour past, probably in some little room that was like home to Faith and a brave new world to her undead lover. 

Willow didn't like Faith. At all. So she assumed that anyone who'd take off with the girl, bloodsucking fiend or not, would be likely to indulge in some random killing. So Lindsey probably wouldn't drink from bloodbags like a good little housepet. 

He hadn't fed tonight, though. Not yet. Faith knew it, and was doing all she could to test Lindsey's strength of will. 

"Gee, I'm wicked thirsty. Can we stop and get a drink somewhere?" 

"Ok, there should be a rest stop soon." 

"Good, cos a thirst like this needs to be taken care of. It's all I can think about." Faith cast a sly glance at her passenger. Lindsey rolled his eyes. 

"I've got three bottles left in the back. Soon as we stop I'll get one out." he smiled. Faith looked crestfallen. 

"Damn. I thought you finished those. I was gonna make you totally horny and pull over when we hit more cornfields. So much for my fun." 

"I went to the bloodbank when you were scoping out that tattoo place." 

"I couldn't believe the prices they were charging. Two hundred bucks for one measley little design. Whatever." Faith shook her head. 

Willow opened her eyes abruptly. Aside from the total kink of the conversation, which fitted in with what Willow expected, the thing that struck her was Lindsey's mention of a bloodbank. That wasn't expected at all. Which meant that hadn't been an idle daydream. 

Well. Talk about a happy-weird moment. How powerful was she, anyway? 

(Human-Willow's definition of 'total kink' was a fairly broad one, with blood play fairly high on the list. People who were into that stuff were either unbalanced, like those kids they'd met who stood around in floaty black clothing talking about the morbidity of their dying crimson roses, or they were vampires. Vampires and kink were terms that just seemed to naturally fit together.) 

~~~~ 

Puppy was unchained, too weak to run but painfully aware that he had the chance to. Xander had a razor in one hand, the blade rusted and stained from earlier games. He was making little cuts, barely enough to draw a faint pink line of blood, enough to sting like the devil when tongued and licked. All up one leg, all down the other. He was starting on the torso now. 

Puppy cried out loudly as Xander pressed down with the sharp edge of the metal. The ground was cool and slimy, moss on brick. It made the welts on his back burn. 

Angelus growled low in his throat as Xander made Puppy cry out again. He rubbed at his hand, an itch starting at the base of his thumb. 

"His palm." he said to Xander. Puppy whimpered. Xander smiled and nodded, slicing in at the exact place Angelus was scratching his own hand. This game was fun, but they never played it for long before abandoning the beaten Puppy and moving on to games that only needed two. 

~~~~ 

Faith chewed on her thumbnail. She only needed a few hours sleep at a time, so there was always at least an hour or two when Lindsey was asleep and she was awake. Faith knew how to amuse herself, but it sure did get boring sometimes. 

She thought about calling Buffy. No, she wouldn't do that. B was part of the past now. So long as Faith never had anything to do with her again, she could pretend that the blonde Slayer was living happily ever after. Faith needed to believe in happy endings. 

Finding her portable CD player in her bag, Faith settled down to listen to some tunes. She was turning into a regular yuppie, owning a discman and everything. How very non-tailer trash of her. 

Lindsey shifted in his sleep next to her and Faith turned the volume dial down a little. She'd forgotten he could hear better then her. She could run faster, but even if Slayers had super-hearing Faith listened to enough loud music to kill that skill. 

As the earliest risers, the bakers and the farmers, got out of bed, Faith snuggled in closer to the slightly cold man beside her and closed her eyes, loud bass beats pounding through her skull and driving dark daydreams out of her head. 

~~~~ 

Lying on the couch with the pretense of sleep, Willow found no solace in dreams. Tossing and turning, her thoughts crackled like lightning, jumping from one idea to another. She didn't feel tired, but knew that if she tried to do anything constructive that she'd barely be able to keep her eyes open. It must be dawn by now, she thought to herself. Another night completely devoid of sleep. 

Turning over onto her back, Willow shut her eyes tightly and thought about her friends. Where was Buffy right now? Letting her thoughts drift, she began to think of the places she could be. The Bronze... no, not there. Patrol? Nope. Her mother's house. Yes, that was it. 

Sitting on her bed, Angel opposite her. Her diary from a few years ago in her hands. When she'd first come to Sunnydale. She was reading out entries and they were both laughing. Willow was glad of that. They hadn't had many chances for laughter before. It suited them. 

"A's eyes are penetrating. I feel like he can see through my skin, straight down into me. He can see the things I used to shoplift from the makeup counters. He can see the way I used to bring a flask of hot chocolate to ice skating, with Rainbow Brite stickers all over it to cover that gross tartan pattern. When A looks at me, I feel like he can see everything that I am. It's kinda nice." 

Buffy smiled at the innocent whimsy of the writing. Life at sixteen had seemed so incredibly adult, dealing with monsters and demons and moving to a new highschool. She'd felt everything so deeply then, like it was the end of the world when she missed her favourite movie on tv. 

She smiled at Angel, then flicked through the pages to find another passage about him. A few days ago Buffy had realised with a jolt that she'd never really been in love before. Riley... Riley had been a nice guy, and she liked him a lot. But it hadn't been love. And the whole Angel thing, well that had been a whole lot of things. Heartbreaking, life threatening, intense, amazing. Which Buffy supposed is exactly what true love should be. It hadn't been love, though. He'd been a romantic, tortured figure with a dark side and good bone structure. Nobody can be in love with something like that. You can worship it, but you can't love it properly. 

But she loved him now. Sometimes her skin ached so badly to be against his that she couldn't think. It didn't even feel real, she kept expecting something to go terribly wrong and tear them apart. She felt as if the powers that be were determined to ruin any chance of happiness she and Angel might have had. God struck Buffy as a bitter, insane individual with a particular fetish for screwing up her life. 

Maybe God had finally realised that she deserved some happiness. Maybe He was just on vacation. 

She began to read again. 

"Well, scratch knowing nothing about A. I know hardly anything, and it's still too much. It's strange, I still daydream about him and wish he was nearby all the time. Is love supposed to be this complicated?" 

She'd always just assumed, since then, that love *was* supposed to be that complicated. That any guy she liked was going to be a vampire, or seeking to become a vampire, or a player, or involved in some top-secret government thing. She'd never know anybody who was just ordinary. Love would never be skipping through the fields singing tra la la. 

Closing her diary, Buffy looked at Angel for a long while, studying him. He held his body differently now, less innate grace, more endearing clumsiness. 

"I hope you know how much you mean to me." she said with a small smile. 

Angel took her hand and squeezed it lightly in reply. It was all he needed to say. 

~~~~ 

They didn't even have to wait for Wolfram and Hart. Some teenage warlock was trying to impress his pimply girlfriend by summoning some demons. He hadn't actually planned ahead very well, and had forgotten to initiate any kind of binding spell against their escape. Four vampires can make very short work of two humans. It was good to be back. 

They'd left Puppy behind, figuring that if they were up on earth for say, five hundred years, it would give him ample time in Hell to ponder all the delightful games they'd play with him when they returned. Xander had mentioned the time elapse difference between the two dimensions. Even better, then. Puppy would have lots and lots of thinking time. 

Xander and Willow, whom Angelus and Darla had taken to calling Mickey and Mallory to tell them apart from the human, goody-goody versions, had never played on this earth before. Mallory-Willow had been here once, but all she would say about the experience was that she'd been all fuzzy and it hadn't been any fun. 

"What's the plan?" Mickey-Xander asked Darla while Angelus and Willow posed the bodies in different positions for the boy's parents to find. They were bickering, Willow wanted the girl to be naked with ritual carvings on her and the boy to be praying before her body, Angelus wanted them tanlged on the bed with clothes thrown haphazardly around the room. Darla and Xander ignored them. 

"I'm putting my foot down right now and saying no Sunnydale. No way, no how. Being killed twice is more then enough." Darla said firmly. Willow caught their conversation and turned, relinquishing her hold over the dead boy to join in the discussion. 

"I want to find some more new friends..." Willow said, rubbing her cheek against Xander's shoulder. "Can we find some more like us to play?" 

"There aren't as many here as there were at home, Will." Xander said. She mewed unhappily. Darla smiled at her. 

"Don't worry, we'll find someone." 

~~~~ 

Anya sat in bed, watching Xander as he got dressed. 

"I want something to nurture. You don't need nurturing." 

"Anya, I love you, but houseplants are afraid of you. I don't think a child is the best choice right now." 

"I've seen lots of women with babies. They were doing well. I can copy them." 

"Am I right in guessing you saw these women while doing various horrible things to their menfolk? Not the role model you're going to need, I'm thinking." 

The telephone rang. Xander reached for it but Anya snatched the handset away from him. 

"Hello?" 

"Is Xander there?" Cordelia's voice. 

"Yes." Anya glared at her boyfriend. 

"Well can I talk to him?" Cordelia prompted. 

"All right." Anya handed the phone over grudgingly. 

"Joe's cryogenics, you kill em we chill em." 

"Glad to see you still have that wonderfully geek-like sense of humor. Willow told me you have a washing machine with a special setting for fragile fabrics." 

"I can see how that would come up in everyday conversation, too." 

"Can I use it?" Cordelia's tone was only a question in theory. There was no way that he could answer no. 

"Will you people stop treating me like the local odd job? And I don't mean the guy with the spiffy hat either. Are there no other washing machines you have access to?" 

"If you want my blouse to fall apart into shreds, fine." 

"Am I supposed to be _persuaded_ by that?" 

Cordelia sighed. "I'm bringing my things over." 

Xander put the phone down. There were just too many Scoobies in Sunnydale. The town could only support so many, and what with the holiday season they'd gone way over maximum occupancy. 

~~~~ 

Faith yawned into her hand and kept singing along with the car stereo. "Hey you, you're way ahead of me, you're drunk on apathy..." They were driving until they found somewhere to stay. Faith was sick of travel, she didn't even know what state they were in anymore. But they had to keep going until they found home. 

"Hey, there's someone up ahead." Lindsey said, looking out at the dark infront of the windscreen. Faith squinted, catching the shape of something in the headlights. 

"It's a kid. Hitching at night." Faith raised her eyebrows in surprise. "I didn't think anybody was that dumb." 

Lindsey ignored that. He knew for a fact that Faith had been a regular frequent flyer on the highways as a child. Her self-depreciation was getting a little more gentle, though. He was glad of that. 

"Do you want to pick her up?" he asked. Faith shrugged. 

"Ok. I guess it'd be cool to have another road trip buddy. More the merrier." 

She was very young to be out alone, little jelly sandals on her feet and a backpack with flowers drawn in magic marker all over it. 

"Hey." she offered by way of greeting. "I'm Dawn." 

"I'm Lindsey and this is Faith." 

"Pleased to meet you." Dawn smiled. Lindsey smiled back. She looked sort of like his baby sister. 

"Where you off to?" Faith asked her. Dawn shrugged. 

"Where you going?" 

"Same place you are. Anywhere but here." Lindsey said. Dawn giggled. 

~~~~ 

"I know him." Willow said, following the slightly built man with her eyes. "I don't like him." 

"Who?" Angelus looked up from the homeless man he'd been draining. "Well, well. Look what we have here." 

"I want to make him scream." Willow said with a smile. "I like it when there's screaming." 

"We really should wait for Darla and Mickey." Angelus pointed out. Willow pouted. His heart, or the evil equivalent of his heart, melted. "Fine. Go have fun." 

"Oh, I will." Willow smiled, her face contorting as she walked over to the small redhead waiting at the traffic lights. 

~~~~ 

Cordelia woke up screaming. 

"Oh my God, oh my God." she clutched at her temples as her head pounded. "Oh my God." 

She could hear her mother stirring in the next room over and tried to quieten her shallow panting. Her bedside phone rang. 

"What? Uh, I mean, hello?" 

"Cordelia?" Giles. She could hear screams in the background. 

"Is that Willow?" she asked, getting out of bed and grabbing the closest clothing, pulling it on as she spoke. 

"Yes." He sounded very worried, still a little disoriented from sleep, and a little afraid. 

"I'll be there soon as I can." If Willow's nightmare had been anything like Cordelia's, no wonder she was screaming. 

~~~~ 

She wasn't coherant. She couldn't form thoughts, although forming the thought that she couldn't form thoughts was a thought she was forming, wasn't it? Her head was so busy. Oz had always said that, so many thoughts inside her head. If it was so busy, why couldn't she put the flashes together into a string of something decipherable? 

Dimly, she knew she was shaking. Violently. There was somebody beside her, but it seemed such a long way off. Buffy. Buffy was next to her. Giles... no she had to call him Rupert, like the bear, the one with the yellow scarf who went on adventures, Rupert the Bear... Rupert had called them all. Because she wouldn't stop screaming. 

Footsteps. Somebody else has arrived. She wasn't alert enough to notice the footsteps were the click of high heels, but she knew it was Cordelia anyway. Weird moment. No happy here. 

"Willow?" 

Her name. The name of her. She should say something. 

"I got a vision just before Giles called me. I'm so sorry." Cordelia hugged her tightly. Willow received the embrace without speaking or moving at all. 

"What happened?" Buffy asked, not moving from beside her. Good. Willow needed her there to stay afloat. She'd drown if Buffy moved away. 

"Some vampires attacked Oz. Usually when I get a vision it's before anything happens, so I can tell Angel and he'll stop it. But this..." Cordelia closed her eyes and drew a shuddering breath, tears slipping down her face. Willow noticed numbly that she wasn't wearing any makeup. 

"Angel." Willow whispered through dry lips. He came through the door, he'd been with Buffy when Giles had called and had gone to collect Xander, Anya and Tara. He walked through the door a second after she spoke. Willow turned to look at him, standing up. The blanket someone had draped over her shoulders slipped down to the floor. "Why didn't you save him? You saved Lindsey for Faith and she's evil and she kills people and he's a lawyer and you still saved him for her and I'm very seldom naughty and I never do anything bad and they tore him apart but it wasn't a they it was me, me, I killed him, I saw it, I hurt him and he saw it was me before he died and you didn't save him and –" her ramble died as shouts were replaced by sobs and she collapsed against Buffy, covering her face with her hands. "It w-w-was m-m-me." The whisper was barely words, hiccoughing gasps of air. 

"Willow." Tara pushed past Angel, who had frozen in the doorway at Willow's outburst. Willow looked up again, glaring. 

"Don't you touch me!" she screamed, pulling away from Tara. "Don't come near me, any of you. Only Buffy and Cordelia and Rupert." she huddled against Buffy, who held her gently, like she was a doll that would break easily. 

"Ok, Willow, we're here. C'mon up to the bedroom, you can get some sleep." Cordelia said, trying to sound her usual chipper self and failing rather badly. 

"Buffy and Cordy and Rupert." Willow muttered again, allowing herself to be led by the three of them. 

~~~~ 

Dawn cried out, clutching at her head. Faith's hands jerked on the wheel in surprise. As she tried to put the car back on the correct side of the road, Lindsey tried to twist in his seat enough to help the little girl. 

"I think she's having an epileptic fit or something!" Faith said, turning around herself. Good thing there was nobody on the roads at this hour. 

"No, I think it's a vision. Our little passenger is a seer." Lindsey said, stroking Dawn's hair as the episode seemed to pass. "Dawn, are you all right?" 

"Stop the car!" Dawn cried out. Faith put the brake on reflexitively. 

"Why're we stopping?" she asked the girl. Dawn looked uncomfortable. 

"You'll thing it's dumb." 

"No, I think the Tom Green show is dumb. I think non-alcoholic beer is dumb. I think little girls yelling and holding their heads and then telling me to stop the car is sort of interesting. Why did you want me to stop?" 

"Promise you won't laugh at me." 

"We promise." Lindsey said. "Now what's wrong?" 

"There are vampires this way." Dawn said, not looking at either adult. 

Faith raised her eyebrows. "Really? Cool. How many?" 

"Don't make fun of me!" 

"Sweetheart, if I was gonna make fun of you I'd find something funnier then that to say, trust me." Faith started the car again. "Now, how many we talking here?" 

~~~~ 

"She's sleeping ok now." Cordelia came back down the stairs. "Only ate half my valium supplies." she caught Xander's expression. "Hey, don't give me that look. You try sleeping naturally when your dreams are like that one." 

"Is sh-sh-she going to b-b-be ok?" Tara asked quietly. Cordelia shrugged and nodded at the same time. 

"Yeah, I guess. It was pretty horrible." 

"Sh-sh-she said it was her in the v-v-vision. What did sh-sh-she mean?" Tara's usual stutter was worse then normal. 

"You don't think..." Angel trailed off. "The Willow from the other world? She could have found a way back here." 

"Gee, lately it's just been one reunion after another." Xander said, running his hand through his hair to push it off his forehead. 

"If only Faith and Lindsey were here." Angel said, almost to himself. Cordelia sat down next to him. 

"Here? We don't even know where Oz was, whoever did it could be days away. Anyway, that prophecy you and Wesley are so in love with - not that I'm bad-mouthing a thing that got me out of that horrible repeat-cycle vision - says that the vamp with a soul has a seer as his link to the PTB. So even if Lindsey is your man, which I'm still not buying by the way, then that would make me the seer. Otherwise I wouldn't still get the visions. So eventually our paths are gonna cross, right?" 

"Actually, a lot of people receive visions. Willow obviously did." Tara pointed out. Cordelia looked disbelieving. 

"No way." 

"She's right." Angel agreed. "Drusilla gets them." 

"Please, please don't tell me _she's_ going to pop out from behind a tombstone and join the party." Xander said, looking up as Buffy came down the stairs. "How's our gal doing?" 

"She's ok, she woke up and asked for a glass of water. Still shaken, but no longer over the cuckoo's nest." Buffy sighed and leant against Angel, closing her eyes. "She won't let Giles out of her sight though. It's all so... God, is it too much to ask for a week with no deaths or torments or ends of the world?" 

Anya murmured in her sleep, Xander automatically reached out to soothe her. Poor Will. Xander doubted he would have coped as well as she had, even if that hadn't been that well on a scale of one to actually coping. 

~~~~ 

"See, Dawn, vamps aren't really a problem for me." Faith said with a grin, sauntering away from the third and final pile of dust she'd just added to the sidewalk and putting her arm around Lindsey's shoulders where he stood next to the young seer. He hissed in pain. 

"Crap, sorry Lind. Must have spilt Holy Water on my sleeve." Faith pulled her jacket off and pushed it through the open car window. "Hey, what's this town called, anyway?" 

"Didn't catch the sign." Lindsey admitted before noticing Dawn's expression. "I'm not going to hurt you." 

"But you're a vampire." 

"Yes." 

"I think I need to get some sleep before I hear any more big newsflashes." Dawn commented, looking a little dazed. 

"We'll go find a place to get some shut-eye." Faith agreed, laughing at the expression on the child's face. The three of them climbed back into the car and set off looking for a place for the little girl to get her rest. 

~~~~ 

"The clientel here isn't that great." Willow said, putting her feet up on the table she was sitting at. There had only been a few people in the bar, but enough to fill their beer mugs at least. "So quiet. Place is lifeless." 

Angelus laughed. "You would have loved Dru, Mallory. She had such a wonderful sense of humor." 

"Had?" Darla, walking over with Xander, sat down with them. It struck Angelus that the two of them were together a lot of the time. He stood and moved behind the younger vampire, nipping at his neck as he continued to talk to the two women. No harm in reminding Xander who was the Alpha here. Which was a pity, because Angelus was fond of harm. 

"She's got a point. For all you know, she could still be alive somewhere." Oz said, breaking the silence he'd been sitting in beside Willow. The redhaired girl smiled and licked a smear of blood off his cheek. 

"Such a messy little wolfie. Mummy Willow's gotta clean you up." 

~~~~ 

 

  



	7. Final Crisis

Lindsey smiled softly at the innocent scene on the back seat of the car. Pillowed by her knapsack, Dawn's hair fell around a face relaxed in sleep, features smoothed by dreams that girls her age were supposed to have, toys and television and puppy-love crushes. 

Not demons and darkness and premonitions. 

They had just pulled into the parkinglot of a motel. It was late at night, about two in the morning, but Lindsey and Faith were night people so it didn't really matter. Dawn was obviously in need of rest though. 

"I think perhaps an early night is in order." Lindsey turned away from the back to address Faith. She was fiddling with her hair and looking off into space. That made him smile again. "How about I take Dawn into our rooms and you go check out that club we passed?" she looked so happy and alive when she was fired up from slaying. 

"'kay." Faith grinned, pecking him on the cheek and climbing out of the car. 

~~~ 

The night made the river look black as ink, the obsidian surface swallowing everything without prejudice or preference. Plastic litter sank just the same as dead things. The river would engulf anything, and the city on the river learnt its behaviour from the water. It was a city that would embrace everything without judging anything. Faith felt like she'd stumbled into a Poppy Z Brite book, the only novels she'd ever managed to finish reading. Pretty boys in torn, soft clothing and curvy girls spilling out of tight, glossy dresses. She could deal with living in a place like this. She could be the lone, lawless hero, riding into the town and taking justice into her own hands. The club she was currently standing outside could be her saloon. 

Nobody ever asked her for ID, which irritated her mildly since she actually had some to show for once. Not her real name or age, but it was legal and she'd never had a chance to test it. 

But the music was loud, the dancefloor packed. Faith moved like an angel dipped in sin, the whole room was in love with her within twenty minutes. She flirted enough to get a few free drinks into her system, the energy coursing through her enough to draw her back onto the dancefloor time and time again. The music, her adrenalin, the alcohol, it all combined to make one heady drug. Faith hoped Dawn was a heavy sleeper, because she was going to do a different sort of dancing with Lindsey soon as she got back to the motel. 

~~~ 

Lindsey hated waking Dawn, but there was no way he could carry her to bed with only one hand. She didn't go back to sleep, rather the questions came thick and fast. Where were they from? Did they really have nowhere in particular as a destination? How come he was a vampire but not a bad guy? Dawn could certainly talk when she wanted to, even though she'd been so quiet in the car. Lindsey thought she might be a little in awe of Faith. 

"Who owns that?" Dawn asked as Lindsey searched through Faith's case for her cigarettes. He hated her smoking and threw them out whenever he got the chance. He looked at the item of clothing he'd been shifting aside. A light-colored cardigan, crumpled up and stuffed in the corner of the suitcase. 

"Faith." 

"Really? It doesn't look like what she wears." Dawn commented. Lindsey half-smiled. 

"She had to pretend to be someone a bit different to who she really is. Not as different as she'd like to claim, though." Faith was quieter then she had been and took things more slowly. She was more honest then she once was. Yes, the 'real' her was rather like the girl she'd played in court. But she still swore and drank and smoked and enjoyed sex as often as possible. She was violent, unpredictable, beautiful. Lindsey thought she might well be a goddess. 

"When'd you fall in love with her?" 

Lindsey thought for a moment. "She was sitting in a police station and she turned to face just where I was standing. Her eyes were so full of so many things." 

"Aw, that's so romantic. Almost enough to make me throw up." 

Lindsey threw the sweater at Dawn with a laugh. 

~~~ 

Drunk on life and a whole lot of vodka, Faith wasn't sure if she really heard the laugh or imagined it. Low, quiet, unearthly. Spinning on her heel, the sole of her boot making a slight squeaking sound, she looked around. Just a blur of faces, eyeliner and teased hair and the smell of misspent youth. Maybe it was just her imagination, the part of her that was always looking for ways in which her newfound happiness could crumble. 

~~~ 

The neon lights outside made the dark room change color, red like sticky candy, blue like icy snow cones. Willow stood in front of the single window, her pale, naked form drenched in the reflected tints. They never bothered to wear clothes, in the room. 

Angelus adored them all. Xander was his favourite, but they were all beautiful, delicious. The thin lines of a silhouette before the window, a gleam of red hair and white skin and glittering teeth, and the shadowed tangle on one of the filthy piles of cushions that dotted the floor. Wild animals won't pollute the place they live in, but these three creatures Angelus loved so weren't animals. Animals kill out of instinct, not cruelty. Not for pleasure. 

Oz stirred, shifting out from under Xander to greet Angelus. Willow turned at the movement, her face widening into a mockery of a smile. 

"You went and saw it again." 

Angelus nodded, shedding his own clothes and joining her by the window. The blanket they kept pinned over it was in several pieces on the floor. Willow followed his gaze. 

"Oh, sorry. I got impatient." 

Angelus simply laughed. Willow smiled. "Was your movie good tonight?" 

"Movies are always better with munchies. For that total cinema experience." 

"You know, I can probably set you up with a DVD of it. Save you money on tickets and all." Oz offered. "And I can get Velvet Goldmine too. It's got the same actor in it. Good movie." 

"I don't think it's the actor our Angel goes to see every night." Willow's smile was sleepy and seductive. "I think he misses the one who could be just like that, if only he'd admit it." 

"Our very own American Psycho." Angelus admitted. "He could have been twice as bloodthirsty, and twice as attractive. I wonder where he and that slut consolation prize of a Slayer are now." 

"You're really going to like my news. Guess who I saw at the club tonight." Oz said, wrapping his arms around Willow's waist and dancing with her in the neon lights and shadows. 

When the young vampire told his sire, Angelus laughed and laughed. It was a disturbing sound – low, quiet, unearthly. 

~~~ 

Faith felt physically ill, her skin suddenly too tight for her body. The chill in the dawn air didn't help her, the alcohol and sudden shock leaving her rooted to the spot. 

"So, it's true." Xander's smile had no warmth and little humor. "I suppose you've guessed I'm not the welcome wagon. I'm very interested in your stay in town though. See you around." he walked off before she could even speak. 

Stunned, unhappy, Faith walked back to the motel with her head cast down. Xander. With very little in the way of healthy skintone, and the all-black-leather look Faith herself liked. Xander, whom she'd tried to kill, once upon a time. Looked like somebody else had done a more successful job of it. 

Lindsey was asleep already, sitting on the couch with his head tilted back, snoring faintly. He'd obviously dozed off waiting for her. 

Being as quiet as she could, Faith took the phone into the bathroom. Dialing Giles' number, she tried not to burst into tears. She didn't cry. Not for anybody. 

"Hello?" Crap. Crap crap and extra crap on the side. Wesley. 

"Um, hi." 

"Faith." Ok, so she pretty much deserved that tone of voice. 

"There's not much point in me saying sorry for everything, so I'm not gonna. How's B holding up?" 

"As well as can be expected." Wesley's words were short. 

"How long since it happened?" God, this was so hard. Faith wished she could just hang up the phone and crawl into bed. Damn this newfound humanity. Damn it to hell. 

"Only a day or so." 

"Is everyone else ok?" 

"To varying degrees. Willow took it hardest, of course." 

Faith and the redhead had never gotten along so great. But she felt really bad for the young witch, losing somebody who'd been in her life to the extent Xander had. Faith had never let anybody in that close. That's why Lindsey was such a weird not-the-normal thing. Dawn was cute too. Another reason Faith was taking the vamp-Xander thing so hard. People important to other people shouldn't die. 

"Give them my love, 'kay?" This was too hard. She couldn't do this. How did anyone survive caring about anything if it could hurt this much? 

"I'll pass on your condolences." 

"And Wesley?" 

"Yes?" 

"I'm sorry." 

~~~ 

Darla hadn't stayed with them long. Four's company, five's a crowd. That's what she'd said, anyway. They knew she was pining. Angelus had given her a list of Spike's likely haunts, sad to see her go but glad to part ways with Darla without death or hatred for a change. 

So it was only four moving shadows that slipped into sleep early in the daylight, a sprawl of cool flesh interlocked in a room that never saw the sun. Angelus didn't dream in the usual way. He weighed up possible plans, fantasized about future victims, relived the past. Among the vivid images, he decided on a course of action, a smile ghosting across his face as he slumbered. 

~~~ 

Faith dreamed of Buffy's bedroom. Buffy sat cross-legged in the center of the bed. 

"You changed it. She's your little sister now." The blonde said, looking at the space to Faith's left. Turning, Faith saw Dawn standing there. The girl looked afraid. When Faith turned back to Buffy, she was standing, two identical Angels behind her. 

"Watch out, one of them's evil." Faith said, her voice quieter then she wanted it to be. 

"You told me I had miles and miles to go." Buffy sounded accusing. "But you put a dead end in my way and now there's dead angels everywhere. The ground's covered in red feathers." 

Faith looked down. There were photographs, torn into tiny pieces all over the floor. Her and Lindsey, Buffy and Angel. Willow and Giles? Faces, all ripped and incomplete. 

"You've got a visitor. Sorry he can't stay." one of the Angels said, nodding his head to something behind her. Faith turned, hardly having time to gasp before Lindsey lunged and bit into her neck. Dimly, she could hear Dawn scream somewhere. 

~~~ 

She awoke to the sound of Dawn screaming. Climbing out of bed hurriedly, Faith went into the girl's room. She was sitting up in bed, a beam of sunlight through the window catching the almost fever-bright fear in her eyes. Lindsey was just behind Faith, but stopped in the doorway, the light preventing any further movement. 

"Dawn? What's up?" Faith asked, sitting down on the end of the bed. The kid wasn't a kid, really. Fourteen wasn't that young. Faith could remember being fourteen. It had really sucked. 

"I had a nightmare. Sorry I woke you guys up." 

"That's cool, I was having a sorta gross dream myself." Faith assured her. 

"Anybody feel like staying awake for a while and watching bad daytime TV with me?" Lindsey asked. Faith and Dawn both nodded. Lindsey smiled. If somebody had told him a few months ago where his life was heading, he'd probably have thrown them out of his office. 

~~~ 

When Faith next awoke it was night, and someone was knocking loudly on the door. Lindsey and Dawn were still asleep. 

Angel was outside, looking slightly soaking from the torrential rain. No, wait, what reason would Angel have for being here? Faith imagined that the ex-vampire was probably comforting Buffy right now. Anyway, Angel wouldn't have any way of knowing where they were. 

Faith had her stake clenched firmly in hand as she opened the door, keeping well away from the dark, wet figure outside. 

"This a social call?" she asked. He looked wounded. Angelus was a good actor, then. Didn't fool her. 

"Can I come in? I have awful news." 

Faith laughed sarcastically. 

"Gee, I didn't peg you as somebody so polite. Asking to be invited in, how very not-obvious of you." 

"Actually." Angel smiled, and now Faith had no doubts at all that she was dealing with Angelus. "I rented a room just down the hall. So I guess there's nothing stopping me doing this." He pushed her back, sending her sprawling, and stepped into the room. Faith jumped to her feet and brought the stake down at Angelus' heart. He punched at her from the left, but she dodged to the side. Straight into the high kick. Trying to recover from the blow, Faith chastised herself. Peripheral vision. She had to check her peripheral vision more often. Angelus tried to use the same combo again but Faith blocked it easily, checking the corners of her sight for unexpected developments. 

The sight that greeted her was pretty damn unexpected. Willow, her face in demon mode, holding Dawn tightly and laughing. Faith kicked at her head, then spun and used the same kick on Angelus. He headbutted at her own skull. There was one spot, just on Faith's hairline, the site of her concussion. That was the only place on her body that even Slayer healing couldn't fix. The pressure against it was enough to stun her. Angelus laughed as she stumbled, dazed. As he hit her again Faith's whole world exploded into sharp black stars. 

~~~ 

She was chained to a chair, the heavy iron cutting into her skin. Faith was good at waking up fast, but she felt so groggy that it was a struggle on this occasion. 

"You really have a thing about seeing me in chains, don't you?" Faith snapped at Angelus. He was crowding her vision, she tried to look behind him. She needed to see that Dawn and Lindsey were ok. They had to be. 

Angelus obligingly moved out of her way. Dawn and Lindsey were both chained to chairs as well, unconscious and flanked by vampires whose faces made Faith feel ill again. Willow, Xander, Oz. All dead... wait, hadn't Wesley said Willow was alive? 

"You're from that other world." Faith said to the three demons who wore the faces of the young trio. 

"Wrong. Two out of three's not bad, but you're still wrong." Oz smiled laconically. "I'm just one of those many, many people that a screwup like you failed to protect." 

Faith's fingertips were fluttering behind her back, hoping for a weak spot in the chain but finding none. 

"Let's play a game, Faith." Angelus said, his voice soft and silky. "Let's see... you tried to kill me, then you tried to turn me evil, then you tried to kill me again. Darla and Spike tried to kill Lindsey, I tried to turn him evil... can you guess what comes next?" 

"It's poetic justice, Faith." Xander spoke up. Angelus nodded. 

"Recognise this stuff?" he brought out a hypodermic filled with an oily, off-white liquid. The Latin translates roughly into Killer of the Dead. I figure if a little bit on an arrow is enough to almost kill me, a whole needle should be interesting." 

Faith struggled as hard as she could, deciding that breaking the chair would be far easier then tackling the chains. Willow ran her hand through Dawn's hair. 

"No no no Slayer, stop that now. Or I use her eyeballs as lollipops." 

Faith stopped struggling. Angelus slapped Lindsey's cheek. 

"Wakey wakey soul boy. Kind of ironic when you think about it, a lawyer with a soul. Can't stand the things myself." 

Lindsey grunted, his eyes sliding open. Angelus kissed him on the forehead and plunged the syringe into his arm. Lindsey cried out in agony and Angelus clamped a hand over his mouth, which was promptly bitten down on. 

"Not my blood you need, Lindsey." Angelus said, pulling his hand away with a laugh. "We're going." He addressed the other three. "Bring the girl." 

As soon as they were gone Faith broke the sturdy wooden chair apart and disentangled herself from the pile of chains and splinters. 

"Lind? Lindsey?" Faith made short work of unchaining him and moving him onto the bed. 

"Faith. " Lindsey's eyes rolled back in his head and he coughed, blood speckling his lips. "Latin names... I know Latin, I had to say the Latin to get the raising finished... did you know that the Latin for sacred is the same as for accursed?" he asked her, the words spilling out in a delirious stream. "Sacer. Like a vampire with a soul, or a Slayer." His voice trailed off into mumbling. 

Faith didn't have time to consider the consequences of her actions. Ripping her shirtsleeve off, Faith held her wrist to his lips. 

"Drink already." she ordered him. Closing her eyes so she wouldn't have to see his face change, Faith hoped that he wouldn't kill her. But it didn't matter if he did, because she couldn't imagine not saving him. 

~~~ 

At first the nurses though it was another overdose, so common among the younger people who came into the ER. The man who brought her in certainly looked like he was on something, sweat-soaked and frantic. 

"She's lost a lot of blood." he told the nurses. The tear on her wrist was still bleeding. 

"What's her name?" they asked him as they gave her a transfusion. 

"Faith." 

"Just Faith? Like Madonna?" the nurse asked. "We need a surname too." 

"McDonald." Faith croaked, opening her eyes. 

"Well hello there sleeping beauty." the nurse smiled. Faith tried to get up but was held down. "You're not going anywhere. Suicidal patients have to stay until they have a psychiatric evaluation." 

"I'm not suicidal." Faith argued. The nurse, Fern, raised her eyebrows, looking down at the ragged gash across the veins of Faith's arm. 

"Really, I'm not." 

"You're staying here. We'll restrain you if you won't cooperate." 

"Lindsey." Faith pleaded. Lindsey couldn't meet her eyes, his expression concerned. 

"You're weak. Perhaps it's best if you stay here." 

"I can't! Let me up!" Two orderlies held her down as she struggled. "Lind!" 

"I'll be back soon." He promised. 

The hours dripped by like slow honey until Lindsey came back. He felt like Faith looked -drained. 

"Did you find her?" Faith's voice was quieter then she wanted it to be. Lindsey nodded. Faith shut her eyes, not wanting to cry. 

"There were quite a few of them. The police said she was the oldest, the others were a fifth grade class on a field trip." Lindsey couldn't close his eyes without seeing the yellow police tape, the bags for tiny bodies. And the red writing on the wall. 'Still hate it when they kill kids, Lindsey?' 

He sat down on the edge of her bed. She held his hand tightly as she could, as if she'd die without that small touch. 

"There's an oracle an hour's drive out of town, underneath a ruined lighthouse on the coast. I'm going to see what I can do now." 

Faith had never heard this tone of voice from Lindsey. Exhausted. Defeated. 

"Let me see them." Faith said. "You've done enough for tonight." 

"But you're still so weak." 

She silenced him with a look. 

~~~ 

"Have you brought me a gift?" the oracle asked. Faith didn't even pause, although mentally she made a note to chide Lindsey for not warning her. 

"Here." Faith threw the Swiss Army knife she kept in her back pocket. The shimmering silver-gold woman with hair of green cobwebs smiled at the small token. 

"Appropriate from you. So many uses, but known mostly for the bringing of pain and darkness." 

"Yeah, well, the store was fresh out of toasters." Faith crossed her arms, feeling tired and cold. "I guess you know why I'm here." 

"You can't win against him. He's set it all in motion, and the only way it can end is with an endless darkness." 

"You gotta be kidding." Faith shook her head. "There isn't a single thing I can do?" 

"From the moment the one with the soul saw you, it was in motion. You couldn't stop it, not even to save the world." 

"You mean Angel, or Lindsey?" 

"The one who waits just outside for you." 

"So you're telling me that when I got in the limo and he asked me to kill Angel, we set stuff up for the end of the world?" 

"No. He got a glimpse of your soul when you were both in a room of law. This path was set in place at that second." 

"And I can't do squat to stop it?" 

"The price is high." 

"Hey, I'm a Slayer. I figured I'd have to die to save stuff eventually. Go ahead." 

"Higher then that." 

"Higher then death? Well, what then?" 

"I'll turn back time to that moment. And the world will take another route." 

"Won't it all just happen again?" 

"You alone will remember." Faith opened her mouth to speak. The oracle cut her off. "Before you answer, know that it is a terrible weight on a soul, to carry memories such as these. Higher beings then you have gone mad under the strain. Angel only gave up a single day and it almost killed him. You're relinquishing months, and the only love you've ever known." 

The mention of Angel gave Faith perspective on her choice. He and Buffy deserved a happy ending. And what about her? To remember Lindsey, remember him joking with her before her trial, remember the horrible moment when she thought she'd lost him, and driving with him and talking with him and falling in love with him? Her heart wanted to be selfish. She needed Lindsey. She needed to know Buffy and Angel were together and could grow old and be Elizabeth and Liam together, their real names that Faith had found so funny. Hadn't they earned some happiness, all of them? But Faith couldn't convince herself. Because it would be wrong. Oz and Dawn and those kids had paid too highly for that happiness. Plus that whole imminent end of the world thing. 

"How long do I have?" Faith asked, praying she could hold her tears in and be brave. The little firecracker. 

"Until two." 

Faith looked down at her watch. One fifty-four. 

"No, that's not enough time." Faith shook her head. "Please." 

The oracle smiled sadly and Faith fell sprawling onto the ground where the doorway had been. Lindsey helped her stand. 

"What did they say?" he asked. Faith smiled, an expression that threatened to collapse into tears. 

"I'll tell you in a minute. Just hold me, 'kay?" Faith tried to memorise the feel of his skin, the smell of his hair. She'd seen people give up everything that meant anything to them – torture victims, greedy manipulators. Lindsey was the only one who'd ever given her power over them willingly and with trust. 

"I love you." she whispered, and the tears won out as she began to cry. She'd only sobbed like this twice before, when Angel wouldn't kill her and when she thought Lindsey was going to die. 

"Shh. It's going to be ok." Lindsey promised, and with a final kiss the world slid sideways. 

~~~ 

The disorientation wasn't enough to make Faith forget what she had to do. When she heard a movement on the other side of the room she resisted the urge to look up, forcing her eyes down at her palms. The skin of her wrist was free from the stitches she'd gotten at the hospital, of course. Faith hadn't realised how much healthier she'd gotten until she saw the thinness of her fingers. Just another thing she'd never allow herself to regret. 

She heard Buffy and Angel arguing somewhere nearby, and didn't allow herself to remember how they might have been. Something on her wrist caught her eye – scars that looked old, but hadn't been there moments ago. Deep enough so that they would never heal all the way, even with Slayer regeneration. Angular lines that made up a word. Sacer. Five little letters, two of which were vowels. Accursed and sacred, all at once. 

When the cell door was closed and she was alone with only herself for company, Faith closed her eyes, leaned back against the door, sighed a tired sigh. Exhaustion settled over her like a heavy, comfortable blanket. 

And the edges of a bittersweet smile lingered on her lips. 

  



	8. Ok, maybe not so final

Lindsey didn't dream that often. It was a coping mechanism he'd developed, back when his primary concerns in life were how to get his clients back on the streets and which vapid actress he'd invite back to his apartment that weekend. He hadn't dreamed at all since 'making a lifestyle change', as Faith had termed it in a fit of playfulness. He could do without vampire dreams, really. 

 

He awoke to the sound of Dawn screaming. She sounded younger then her real age, a child in peril. The dream he'd been pulled out of whispered through his head, flash images and a terrible sense of loss. Faith stirred next to him, both of them going to check on their little companion. 

 

Lindsey couldn't go to Dawn's bedside the way Faith could. Compared to losing a hand, being allergic to sunlight didn't really impede his lifestyle to any great degree. It could be annoying at times, though. He'd have to find out about any medical breakthroughs in the field of sunblock. He rolled his eyes at his own insanity. 

 

"Dawn? What's up?" Faith asked, sitting down on the end of the bed, reaching out to stroke Dawn's sweat-soaked hair. 

 

"I had a nightmare. Sorry I woke you guys up." 

 

"That's cool, I was having a sorta gross dream myself." Faith assured her. 

 

The feeling of déjà vu was overpowering. Lindsey blinked once, twice, three times, trying to clear his head and recall why this moment seemed so vivid. 

 

"We're going. Right now." Lindsey said, a frown on his lips. 

 

"Lind? You ok?" Faith furrowed her brow. "I thought we could maybe stay here for a little while. I sorta like it. And I saw Xan- I saw a vampire tonight. I don't think we should ride off just yet." 

 

"Do you trust me?" 

 

Now she looked really confused. "Yes, of course I do." 

 

"Then trust me when I say we're leaving right now." 

 

"Um." Dawn spoke up. "Newsflash. It's a little sunny outside for you to play, isn't it?" 

 

"I'll lie in the trunk." 

 

"Geez, you are serious about going." Faith shrugged. "Ok. Dawn, get your stuff together." 

 

~~~ 

 

"They're miles and miles away now." Willow was looking out the window again, her skin reddened by the sunlight still glinting in the dusk. "Running away." 

 

"Are we going to follow?" Xander threw aside the remains of the bird he'd been playing with. Oz had stolen it from the house they'd ransacked, after Angelus and Willow had finished with the owners. It was some sort of exotic lorikeet, bright red feathers drifting down onto the dusty wooden floor. Perhaps they'd go live in the house, for a while anyway. This place was getting filthy. 

 

"What are they running from?" Oz asked. Vampire Willow was nothing like the girl he'd loved, but he was different from the man he'd been, so that was all right. She had a predator coiled inside her, like Veruca had. Like a steel spring, about to snap. 

 

"The end of the world." Angelus cut in. Xander looked a little annoyed. 

 

"Do you always have to cut in to every conversation unannounced? Would it kill you to participate like everyone else, instead of butting in and being cryptic? And anyway, why exactly do you want to end the world, considering how badly you get your ass kicked every time you try it? If I were you I'd consider changing my long term goals. Or short term goals, since ending the world doesn't really require long term ones." 

 

"But you're not me." Angelus growled, grabbing Xander by the hair. The fledgling simply smiled, wiping a little of the bird's blood off his chin and smearing his fingers on Angelus' cheek. 

 

"I think we should vote on it." Willow suggested. "All those in favor of ending the world. Again." 

Angelus raised his hand, then scowled when nobody else did. 

 

"Well what do you all want to do then?" his annoyance slipped away into boredom. 

 

"I want a pony." Willow said, clapping her hands. 

 

"A real pony or a people-pony?" Oz smiled. 

 

"A people pony with pretty gold hair. I'll name her Buffy." 

 

"Remember what Darla said, Will. No Sunnydale." Xander reminded her. 

 

"But Darla's not here." Angelus stood again, a smile replacing the annoyed boredom. 

 

~~~ 

 

"That's an, um, interesting, er, look for you." Lindsey managed to say finally. Faith laughed. While he'd been sleeping in the trunk the two of them had given each other ridiculous makeovers. Faith's eyeshadow was on so thick that when she blinked a small blue cloud wafted off her face. 

 

"I gotta take a break." Faith said, stretching. They'd stopped as soon as the sun set to let Lindsey out and she had no intention of starting again yet. Being the only one capable of driving was not a fun position to be on for long trips. "I need to get some energy out." 

 

Parked on the side of an empty stretch of road, Faith put a tape in the car stereo, turning it up loud enough that it sounded distorted. Leaving the doors open so that light spilled out, Faith danced with her eyes closed, head thrown back. Dawn sat down sideways on the front seat, watching her. Lindsey smiled, running his hand through his sleep-mussed hair. The moment was perfect, a snapshot of memory he'd always carry. Faith, her face unearthly in the dull golden light, a blur of thick color and movement. 

 

Dancing like a little brown dryad siren to the unearthly song. It was almost heartbreakingly beautiful. Lindsey didn't know why, but it felt like they were being given a second chance. Whatever the reason for that feeling, he was glad. To have missed this moment would be a death of a sort, the death of hope. 

 

Stepping into the dance with her, Lindsey swayed to the music, holding Faith close in a slow, sexy waltz. Dawn turned the volume down a little, so the words almost whispered through the air. A song so full of love and fragility it almost broke the heart to listen to. 

 

This was just a calm before a storm. Their lives would never be easy, or normal. But for this second it didn't matter. It was irrelevant. Because they were here, in the moonlight and the light from inside the car. Dancing close and slow, praying that this feeling, this cobweb-thin emotion of tenderness and love, would be enough. 

 

The song ended, a faster, happier turn taking its place. Faith moved a little way out of the embrace, looking up at Lindsey with the same expression of utter contentment as he knew he himself wore. With a small smile, Faith turned to Dawn and beckoned for her to join them. The three of them danced crazily in the light, laughter bubbling up and spilling out. None of them had ever really known what a happy family was, but it was probably something like this. 

 

~~~ 

 

"It's always funny, what people will do for love." Angelus was pretending to read a book of sonnets but really just watching Xander and Willow blowing bubbles through straws into glasses of blood. It was endearing, in a totally obscene way. 

 

"What made you think of that?" Oz was playing with a seeing-eye dog that had become without an owner rather abruptly. He liked dogs, of course, and they liked him more then they usually did vampires. 

 

"I was just thinking about that slut slayer." 

 

"You're going to have to be more specific with that one." 

 

"Faith. She strikes me as one of those people who'd get their lover's name written across their bodies and hug things so tightly she killed them. She's obsessed with being loved." 

 

"Well she did turn evil to get attention, so I'm agreeing with your appraisal." Oz nodded. The little dog growled and bit at his hand. He slapped it, hard, sending it yelping into the corner, where it cowered, fearful. Oz smiled. He liked dogs. 

 

"My point is, people will always do funny things for love. After we're finished in Sunnydale, let's find out what we can make her do." 

 

~~~ 

 

A vampire's hunger isn't like the human feeling of needing to eat. It is something different, darker. Ask a vegetarian how they feel about eating meat, then imagine feeling that way and at the same time wanting it, needing it, so badly that it is the only thought in your mind. The sound of heartbeats around you measure your entire world, the thick sound of blood inside veins enough to fill the world. Your senses drown in it, and everything you are, your mind, your memories, your dreams, get swept away in the wash. All there is in the world is the hunger and the blood. 

 

Lindsey wrapped his fingers around the neck of the glass bottle and took another drink from it. The liquid tasted flat, like stagnant water, or soda when the bubbles are gone. Revolting. 

 

It was dusk, he'd lost track of the days again. Sometimes he did that. They slept erratically. Faith had pointed out at one stage that they really should settle somewhere, Dawn was too young to drop out of school. But the edges of his nightmare forced them onwards, into the night. He hadn't dreamt again. 

 

What is a soul, exactly? Morals seemed a closer word. Lawyers are soulless because they don't have the same moral code as most people. Loopholes and technicalities replace ethics. Vampires lose their souls in the eyes of the world because when they wake up from being dead, they've lost their moral code. Their world is a different place, and they adapt. They can't hold onto the same codes. 

 

Lindsey's world had been in such upheaval anyway when he was turned, his morals so out of whack that perhaps the normal vampire ethics hadn't taken hold. Maybe it was, as Wesley had suggested, something to do with Angel having sired him. Maybe he was evil underneath and just hadn't noticed. 

God, this stuff tasted hideous. Screwing his face up, Lindsey forced himself to swallow. The hunger died away but didn't vanish, like a tiger that's been caged but still prowls and paces, growling. He'd learnt to ignore it. 

 

Faith and Dawn were asleep on the queen-sized bed, they'd only gotten the one room to save money. He'd spent so long with everything provided he'd forgotten the odd satisfaction that came from managing money well. They both looked contented, two sets of quiet breathing in the evening air. 

 

The air itself was thick, humid rather then hot. Wiping his lips clean and waiting for the girls to wake up, Lindsey could feel the weather like another companion in the air. A storm was coming. 

 

He thought that they might actually be prepared for one this time. 


	9. Hope

The sun warmed her right down into the marrow of her bones, Buffy was sure of it. Sometimes over the past year she had feared that a layer of ice was thickening around her. She'd become harder, and when that revelation had first come to her she'd been too frozen to care. It was just a part of growing up, right? 

She'd been selfish through adolescence, and becoming the the Slayer, with everyone telling her she was so important, One Girl In All The World, hadn't really dissuaded her of her self-centered attitude. 

But lately it had stopped being simple immature selfishness and mutated into adult coldness. 

Apathy was not a solution to life. It held the problems at bay for a little while, but they'd always come back. She was doing her best to thaw, and luckily she had the best people in the world to help her. And other life changes that had made happiness easier. 

Lying on the grass, she could feel every layer of flesh and bone in her body warming. Melting. Buffy totally got those cultures that worshipped the sun. Everything was ok when the sun was out. 

Rolling onto her side, Buffy watched Angel as he slept in the sun. This was love distilled into its purest form - a sunny afternoon with nothing to do but doze on the grass, the feeling of perfect, warm, human skin under her fingertips as she traced the line of his nose. 

Buffy understood Faith utterly, which is why she'd forgiven the other girl in the end. She understood the power that came from slaying, the rush of knowing you controlled the power of death, had a birthright to it. 

This feeling, though, was even more intense. Under her fingertips was absolute life. Angel was an entirely other person to herself, yet he gave her total power over him. Buffy Summers was now owner of something more precious, and in some ways more truly hers, then death. She owned life. 

And Angel owned hers in return. 

Of course, life wasn't exactly perfect for Buffy at that moment, but when had it ever been? Willow was better, at least. She barely left Giles' house for anything, but she was almost herself again. Her and Tara were having a weird... thing. Buffy didn't know quite what other terms to think of it in. She supposed that if the weird thing had been with Oz she would have called it a weird relationshippy thing, but no matter how cool she could make herself be about that whole Will/Tara thing, she couldn't bring herself to think of it as a relationshippy thing, weird or otherwise. 

Xander and Anya were on the rocks too, but it didn't worry Buffy in the same way. She knew they'd work it out, one way or the other. Actually, Buffy's hopes continued to be secretly that Anya would win their ongoing argument. It would be cute if they had a kid, even if they were really young. She'd dig being aunty Buffy. 

Then there were those absent, Faith and Lindsey. Buffy hoped they were happy. Love could be a very screwy thing at times. In her group of Scoobies alone there was every different level of workable young adult relationship. The very happy, like her and Angel, the pretty stable, like Xander and Anya, and the rocky and uncertain, like Willow and Tara. Not to mention the happily and not-so-happily single locals, like Wes and Giles and Cordy. 

But nothing else in the world mattered right now anyway, save for the sky above her as blue as God and the man next to her as warm as the sun. 

~~~ 

"I wanna get married in Vegas." Faith said after about twenty minutes of silence. They were sitting around the hotel room, Dawn was flicking through a teen magazine, Faith was painting her fingernails and Lindsey was leafing through a novel without actually reading it. Just a lazy afternoon. They'd been in this city a few days, the weather was nice and there were enough things open at night to make stopping worth it. 

"Because you want to experience the cheesiest place on earth or because you want to be joined in a lifelong union with another person?" Dawn asked, not looking up. 

"I've seen Vegas before, it's not as cheesy as people think... well, it is, but nothing particularly special. I wanna get married there because it would be fun, and weddings should be a happy occasion, right? I don't do solemn that well." Faith held her hand out to look at her manicuring skills. It looked ok, but she knew it would chip in a few hours. 

"Is that an abstract though or are you thinking of somebody specific to marry?" Lindsey asked, closing the book and looking over at Faith. She looked back. The question had been light, but the glance they exchanged wasn't jokey. 

"Like who?" 

Lindsey knew that tone in her voice. A little scared, like she couldn't decide if she wanted him to pursue the thought or not. 

"Do you want to marry me in Vegas?" he asked. 

"That a proposal?" 

"That depends. Is the answer yes?" 

"I'm not going to answer a question you haven't really asked. Was it a proposal?" 

Dawn rolled her eyes. "I now pronounce you man and wife. God, you two are like porcupines, afraid to get too close in case somebody gets hurt. You love each other. Get married in Vegas, don't get married in Vegas. It won't make a difference either way. You're still gonna be in love." 

Faith laughed. "Aren't you a little young for a shrink, Dawn?" then, her smile fading from a grin to a small, nervous look of happiness, she turned to Lindsey. "If it was a proposal, which I'm still not clear on, then I suppose my answer, which I'm only giving if it actually was a question at all, is yes." 

~~~ 

Her phone was ringing when they got back to the house. A cheery yellow post-it-note on the fridge informed them that Joyce was out with a bunch of people from the gallery. There had been a time when Buffy had been of the opinion that for adults to have a life was to upset the natural order of things, but right now she had so much joy in her she wanted nothing but happiness for everyone in the world. 

She grabbed the ringing telephone, her cheeks flushed from hours out in the heat and the silly, galloping run Angel had forced her to adopt so that a race home would be evenly matched. She'd still won. 

"Hello?" she was keeping one eye on Angel now as he opened the freezer compartment. Somehow, though, it seemed inevitable that he would put an ice cube down her shirt. She loved him even more for it, because texture and temperature and shocked amusement were three of the best things about being young. The fact that ice felt cold her her proved she wasn't frozen herself, it proved how melted her heart was. 

"Buffy?" Tara sounded hesitant. Tara always sounded hesitant. 

"Hey Tara, what's up?" Angel, true to Buffy's suspicions, was approaching her with three cubes in his hand. 

"I know Willow's over at Mr Giles', but she won't return my calls. Has she said anything to you, about me?" 

Buffy tried to listen, she really did, but Angel was trying to put the ice down her clothing as she was fighting him off with her free hand, holding the handset in place with her chin and using both arms to push him away with a chastising smile. 

"No, Tara, she hasn't. Why not go round and see what's up?" 

"I think I will. Thanks, Buffy." 

Hanging the phone up, Buffy grabbed some ice cubes herself and chased Angel with them. 

"I'll get you, you're so dead!" she laughed, feeling warm all the way down to the marrow of her bones. 

~~~ 

"No, Tara, it's not you." Willow said. It was a half-truth, because she was feeling rather apprehensive about her entire relationship, but not an outright lie. She had bigger things preying on her mind. "I just need time out from the world, ok?" 

"Is there anything I can do?" Tara was looking at her with that expression that was so serious and so kind Willow wanted to freeze time and just stare at it forever. 

"Give me space." It hurt Willow to say it, because she did love the blonde girl. But she had no energy to devote to the issues that needed resolving between them. "Just for a little while." 

"Please don't push me away. I want to be here for you." 

"I can't deal with this. I can't deal with us. Tara, if you care about me, let me be alone for a while." 

Tara nodded, not meeting Willow's eyes. "Yes, I'll leave you alone. Sorry I came over." She stood up and walked to the front door. "I'll see you later, Willow." 

"No, don't be like that. Tara..." The door clicked shut behind her. Willow sighed. She'd call her tomorrow and patch things up. She just couldn't deal with it right now. 

~~~

"So what are we going to do first?" Xander asked. He was wiping his chin, because he'd been sloppy again. Angelus would punish him. He stopped wiping his chin, hoping that his retribution would be swift in coming and lingering in going. 

"I want a pony." Willow piped up. Xander smiled. They'd just arrived in Sunnydale, and it was going to be a fun visit. 

"I've got a suggestion." Oz smiled, an evil, decadent expression, what had been laconic in life becoming lazy and reptile in death. 

"What is it?" Angelus was watching Xander, fixated on the way the younger vampire was darting his tongue out to touch the blood on his lower lip. "Xander, if you don't clean your face you'll get punished, you know that." 

"What kind of punishment?" Xander asked, a dark smile on his face. 

"I'll make you watch Steel Magnolias three times in a row with no breaks."

Xander scowled. "Well that's not fun. I want a fun punishment."

"What's your suggestion, wolfie?" Willow asked.

"There's a bitch I want to see put down. Name of Tara." 

~~~

Cordelia was at Giles' as soon as she humanly could be, the vision she'd just had making the inside of her skull feel dirty, bloodsoaked. The front door was open and Willow was sitting outside. 

"This is not really happening." she said, looking up at Cordelia. "It's not supposed to happen like this. She had something secret, something she never told me. I'm never going to know. This can't happen."

She wasn't crying, her voice was flat. 

"Willow..." Cordy didn't know what to say. There was nothing she could say. 

"She used to do this thing where she'd buy bright pebbles, like you put in fish tanks, and drop one into the fountain on Castor street every day for good luck. It was so endearing. I love her so much and she didn't know, thought I was angry. It can't end like this." 

Still no tears came. The shell-shock was too great. Willow had pushed Tara away because she had too much pain to deal with. Now that pain was increased threefold and there was no room in her head for emotions. 

"Have you ever had a really good hot chocolate?" Cordelia asked. "I'll teach you how to make them. You've got to melt dark chocolate in boiling milk, and then add honey. It's worth the effort. Come on, we'll walk to the store and get supplies. You've never tasted anything like it." 

Willow looked puzzled for a moment, as if she didn't speak the right language to understand. Then she nodded. 

"Ok. Distraction works for me. Just until this feels real." Stumbled a little as she stood. "Thanks, Cordelia." 

"For what?" 

"The flakey act. I need it right now." 

"Act? Please. If I could act this well don't you think I'd be famous by now?" 

~~~ 

Ring ring. 

"Hello?" 

"Buffy? Is Willow holding up ok?" 

"How'd you know about it?" Buffy sounded wary. 

"I've got a friend who gets visions. She had one about what's her name. Tara." 

"Willow's doing about as well as you'd expect. Actually, not as badly as I thought she would. I guess grief loses its edge when you have so much in such a short space of time." 

"B, your tone of voice is wicked cold. What did I do?" 

"It was Angelus, Faith. You know, the vampire that your boyfriend claims to have dusted? The one who has a reputation for systematically killing everyone dear to a person and has now gone through two of the people most significant to Willow?" 

The world ended. Right there, easy as that. Nobody but one person in the world knew it was over, but it was. Faith could feel it ending. All the bright shine tarnishing away, the colors bleeding out to grey. The world ended. Lindsey was a bad guy. 

"No, there's gotta be some mistake." 

"No mistake." 

"I'll be there in a few hours. Don't do anything until I get there." 

"How exactly do you plan to do that? You're hardly close by." Buffy's voice was still snappish, but not directed at Faith. She mustn't have know about Lindsey, because Faith was no actress and Buffy could hear the real despair in the second Slayer's voice. 

"Won't be the first time I've ridden in a cargo hold." Faith pointed out. "Promise you'll wait for me? It's my fight, B, don't take it away from me." 

"I'll wait." Buffy promised. "Faith, wait... what about Lindsey?" 

"That's my fight too. I'll take care of it." 

The line went dead. 

~~~ 

//Don't take anything, you won't need anything. Just walk out the door and take the car to the airport. Don't look at him or you'll have to do something about him and you can't/won't. Shoes, need shoes. Next to Dawn's by the door. Dawn...// 

Faith broke out of her half-stunned daze. She couldn't just leave. She'd be leaving the kid in danger. 

"Dawn, we're going now." Faith said woodenly, looking out the window at the small patch of sky outside. Evening. Everything would be over by morning, and then she would go buy enough smack to kill even a healthy vampire Slayer, and finish it once and for all. But before she could do that she had to make sure Dawn was all right, and kill Angelus. She had to do that. 

"Faith?" Lindsey asked. "What's up?" 

"Don't say a word." she didn't look at him. Couldn't look at him. "Or I'll kill you. I don't want to kill you." //Please don't make me kill you.// 

"What on earth are you talking about?" he actually sounded confused. Better actor then she was, then. 

"You said you'd killed Angelus. How did he manage to kill two of Buffy's friends, then?" Faith asked, turning. She'd looked at him now, so she'd have to stake him. But he was so beautiful and gentle and smart. He'd never tried to hurt her... no. These were the kinds of thoughts that kept getting Buffy into strife with Angelus. 

"I don't know what you mean." 

"Dawn!" Faith called again. There was no answer. 

"She found a nest of ducklings out the back, she's looking at them." Lindsey said, stepping in closer to her and trying to touch her arm. "Faith, calm down." 

Her eyes widening in a kind of resigned, heartbroken dread, Faith looked at Lindsey. Then she ran for the door. 

//I'm only doing this because I need to get to Sunnydale and it would take too much time to fight him that's the only reason otherwise I'd beat the daylights out of him and dust him he's killed Dawn she was so cute a little too young for a shrink she would've been there when we got married in Vegas of course he was a bad guy and why should you be surprised you know like attracts like and you're rotten to the core and you know the only reason you didn't kill him is because you love him so much and shut up shut up shut up go kill Angelus and get some heroin and just drift off to sleep like a long wonderful coma with no dreams.// 

~~~ 

The hours passed slowly. Buffy and Giles stood in the courtyard outside his door, waiting for Faith. It was dark. The others were all hidden, huddled together in the tunnel behind the Bus station, the main haunt for street kids. They knew it worked as a dwelling place, and therefore safe from vampires, because Spike had grumbled about it on several occasions. Giles was going to join them soon enough. Xander and Angel had of course protested loudly at not being allowed to fight, but Buffy had ordered them to stay with the others, pleading that Willow couldn't afford to lose three more friends. 

Finally, Faith arrived. Her face was dirty from exhaust, two clean tracks the only outward sign of her dead heart. She'd deny to her final breath that they were tearstains, and Buffy and Giles had more important things to worry about anyway. 

"I think I know where he is." Buffy said in place of greeting. "The graveyard closest to my campus. That's where they found... that's where he's trying to draw us." 

"So it's a trap." Faith wasn't in the mood to die. She was in the mood to kill. 

"It's where he is. He's a trap in himself anyway." 

A woman in her early forties came over to where they were grouped. She seemed rather nervous around them. Not surprisingly, for they made a strange group. 

"Rupert Giles?" she asked. He nodded. "I have a phone call for you." 

"All right." he said, puzzled, following her into her house next door to his. The two Slayers continued talking. 

"You ready to go?" Faith asked Buffy. 

"Ready as I'll ever be." 

"Don't worry, I'm going to win." 

"How can you be so sure?" 

Faith looked up at the swollen midnight moon. "I've got nothing left to lose." 

Buffy nodded. "Ok then. Let's go." They began to run in the direction of the graveyard. 

"Girls, wait!" Giles called, a hundred feet back down the street near his house. Faith looked back towards him, her breath misting in the air. 

"Screw that. Wasted enough time already." she kept running. 

"Faith!" Buffy called, trying to decide which way to go. After a moment's deliberation she ran back towards Giles. 

~~~ 

"It was Lindsey." Giles told her. He was looking through one of his books, urgently seeking some fragment of obscure, arcane knowledge. "He's tried to call here for hours but the phone has been dead. He swears he killed Angelus, Buffy." 

"And you believed him? Giles, Faith is going to face down with the big bad right now and you called me back for that?" Buffy's thoughts focused for a second into the fact Lindsey was still alive. Faith hadn't killed him, but Buffy didn't think that meant that Faith had gone evil. Sometimes you just didn't have the strength to kill someone. 

"He then said that he was very sorry about Xander and Tara." 

Buffy was seriously confused by that. "Huh? Xander? He's hiding with everyone else." 

"Yes, exactly. Apparently Faith saw a very much undead Xander not too long ago. When she called to offer her sympathies to Willow, it must have been because she thought Xander had been killed, not Oz." 

"This could all be a distraction, you know that?" Buffy's energy level was rising. She wanted to be in the thick of a battle with Faith, not talking about things that were irrelevant. 

"But it could be our key to ending this once and for all." Giles said sharply. "If Xander and Vampire Xander exist at the same time it means that these vampires are not from our world. Assuming that Lindsey is telling the truth, Angelus must have been brought back from hell." 

"Whoopee. Not the first time something like this has happened." 

"But I know how to make it the last." Giles paused on a yellowed page of the antique book and skimmed the words, still talking to Buffy. "Have you ever wondered why vampires collapse into dust?" 

"Well, I thought it would be something to do with them being dead." Buffy hazarded. "Ok, I have no idea." 

"It's because the demons that animate the corpses are from another dimension. You can paste them into this one but they're never truly part of it. Here." Giles tore the page out of the book and handed it to Buffy without a moment's hesitation. She took it silently, aware now of how Very Important what he was saying must be. "Chant this over his remains, and pour Holy Water. It will consecrate the ground and prevent his spirit's return to this world." 

"That everything?" 

"Yes." 

"If Angelus has a posse with him, you should get to the others and warn them." 

"I have to wait here for a little longer. Lindsey followed Faith here as soon as he couldn't get in contact with us. It was pure luck that he called my neighbor by accident when dialing here again." 

"Well, a little luck could be helpful right now." Buffy looked at the paper again, then shoved it into her pocket. "You sure you're gonna trust him?" 

"He gave us information that may end this once and for all. I have to trust him." 

"Well, I'm going now. Wish me luck." Buffy suddenly looked very afraid. Giles couldn't remember the last time she'd been so unnerved before a fight. 

"Good luck." 

~~~ 

"Giles. Glad you could make it." Xander said by way of greeting. The atmosphere was tense and dark, nobody speaking much. In their own ways, they were all praying. 

"Oh look, born-again-bad-again-born-again boy." Cordelia said, noticing Lindsey walk through the entrance behind Giles. "Who's your friend?" 

"I'm Dawn." the girl said, sitting down beside Xander, who had given himself door duty. It beat sitting around feeling afraid. He could watch the door and be afraid. 

"There's a distinct possibility that your double will show up, Xander. Faith saw him around the same time of Oz's death." 

A small sound in Willow's throat caught at the sound of Oz's name. She was doing ok though, clutching a stake so hard her knuckles were white. 

"Will mine? I think she might have been the one who - " Willow's eyes blinked down and she took a deep breath. "Killed Oz. Possibly Tara, I don't know." 

Cordelia put her hand over Willow's comfortingly. 

"I don't know." Giles admitted. "All we can do is wait and see." 

~~~ 

The conversation with Giles had taken longer then Buffy had thought, the fight was already over by the time she got there. Not the outcome they'd wanted, but it was over. 

Buffy glanced over at Faith, flicking her eyes over the bloodied crumple that was lying in a way that was just wrong, unmoving and bent at unnatural angles. Nothing left to lose. 

"Hey there Summergirl. I notice you're admiring my handiwork there. She was fighting pretty damn great, but got stuck with my dagger oh, eight or ten times at the end. Rather unfortunate, although it could have been more poetic if I'd gotten my hands on her own knife. Still, it was not without some sort of beauty. Not to mention that as we speak my murder - that's the word for a collective of crows, but I feel it's appropriate in this context – my murder of beauties are ripping your friends limb from limb and writhing in their blood." Angelus smiled. This night was immensley enjoyable. Two whole Slayers, all for him. 

"My friends will dust your murder of uglies and then spit on their ashes." Buffy said through gritted teeth. Faith had fought with nothing left to lose, and she still couldn't win. 

As if Angelus knew what she was thinking, he smirked. "Faith couldn't beat me. What do you have that she didn't?" 

Looking at her opponent with her lover's face and a killer's mind, Buffy knew what she had that Faith hadn't. 

"Hope." 

That made him laugh, the worst sound Buffy had ever heard. 

"This is why I'm gonna miss talking to you when I've peeled your skin off and fed it to some plague rats." 

"Where have you been recently, like in the last couple hundred years? No plague in Sunnydale." She hated this, chatting before a fight. Usually, anyway. Now she planned, predicted. She knew how he'd fight, but in the time since his last opportunity to see her style, she'd done a whole lot of growing up. This was a battle she could win. Had to in. 

"But there will be." Angelus smiled again. "So, Buffy, you have hope. You had Faith, but I guess I took care of that." Buffy had to contain the desperate need to punch him hard as she could. How dare he kill someone as complex as Faith, good and evil and sweat and blood and love and poison all in one, and then just smirk about it? "So that's two graces, what's the third? Faith, hope... is it charity or purity? I'm so bad at pop quizzes. Oh well, you grew up into such a bitch charity isn't even a possibility, and purity was never something you had in spades." 

Buffy ignored him, or at least as much as she could. It was true, though, wasn't it? She wasn't going to win this fight because it was her birthright, or because it was the right thing to do. Her fire was a selfish one. She was fighting for tomorrow, a future that wasn't simply the blank potential of 'I wanna grow up' but actually had definition, edges to the shape. She had gone through too much pain in her young life to let her recent happiness go so easily. 

Buffy was going to win because she had everything left to lose. 

~~~ 

"Hey Willow, you in there?" a singsong voice called from outside. "Come on, come out and play. Don't you miss me?" Oz laughed. "Come on Willow, I know you're lonely in there." 

"You can have lots of friends with us." A second voice joined the first. A darker, silkier version of Willow's own. The girl began to tremble. 

"Oh Goddess." she whispered. "They're going to kill us." 

"No." Angel shook his head. "They can't get in here, and if they do, we'll protect you, Willow. I give you my word." 

"Hey Xander." A third voice from outside. "Invite me in. Don't you wanna see what an ass-kicking vampire you make?" 

"There's only the three of them out there." Giles whispered. "Angelus is fighting Buffy and Faith at the graveyard." 

"Willow." Oz again. The hair on the back of Cordelia's neck stood up. He sounded so predatory, cold and lethal. "You let me die. The least you can do is invite me in." 

"Don't listen to him Wills. It's not Oz." Xander said. She nodded. 

"I know." 

"If you don't come out and fight." Vampire Willow's voice. "We'll go find some little children and crack them open. Is Lindsey in there? Angelus says you hate it when they hurt the little ones." 

"I'm going out to fight. You all stay here." Angel said, his jaw set and his eyes glittering. 

"You'll be slaughtered." Anya objected. 

"I can't let them hurt children." 

"Then I'm going too." she said, getting to her feet. 

"Me as well." Xander stood next to his girlfriend. Willow stood up as well. 

"We're all going. We don't deserve to live anyway, if we don't try." 

~~~ 

She charged, but Angelus sidestepped. Good. She'd planned on that. Dropping low, she kicked one leg out in a sweep behind her and felt it connect with his ankles. Buffy used the few seconds before he regained his footing to make a break for it, darting behind a fallen tree a short way off and stamping her foot down on the dead branches. A supply of extra stakes if she needed them. 

Angelus caught up with her and hit her hard on the shoulder, as she spun the other fist came up and made contact with her jaw. Buffy brought her elbow back and pushed it into his ribcage, kicking out and knocking him off his feet again. She pulled the stake from the waistband of her pants, there were three others hidden in her clothing. Angelus kicked up, gracelessly but effectively, sending her flying back. She landed badly, jarring her back, but got up to her feet. He was laughing. 

"God you're funny, Buff. So full of righteous anger." 

"In an hour I plan to be full of celebratory champagne." Buffy charged again and spun, her foot connecting with his head in a satisfying thump. 

~~~ 

They broke off into small groups, and any annoyance Xander had held previously at the huge number of Scoobies in town was gone. There might actually be enough of them to kill the vampires. 

Willow wasn't fighting, none of them expected her to. She hung back and watched as Xander, Anya, Giles and Dawn grouped around Vampire Xander, Angel, Cordelia and Wesley at Oz, and Lindsey by himself at Evil Willow, because as a vampire he was evenly matched against her. 

They killed Vampire Xander relatively easily, attacking all at once and overwhelming him simply by the ratio of four to one. Dawn was the one to actually drive the stake home, and she looked rather proud of herself. 

~~~ 

Angelus headbutted at Buffy, but she ducked and punched into his stomach. His palms connected with her shoulders and he shoved her back, planting a leg either side of her and sitting on the tops of her legs, pinning her down and punching her in the face so hard she saw stars. 

~~~ 

"You wouldn't kill one of your own kind." Willow hissed at Lindsey, they both had game faces on. He punched, she dodged. 

"I killed Angelus." His well-timed kick connected. Willow didn't fight back, she was sure that Lindsey wouldn't kill her, she'd make him see the truth. 

"Now he's back. What's the point, if it nothing really changes?" she brought her elbow up but he was expecting it and dodged, punching at her again and sending her stumbling. He seized the chance. The sharp wood went in easily and with little resistance. 

"You simply wouldn't understand." Lindsey told her as she crumbled. 

~~~ 

Angelus was choking Buffy, she needed to breath but his hands on her throat meant she couldn't. Her eyes rolled back and she went limp. He stood, looking down at her light hair on the dark soil. 

"Such a pity that the good die young." Angelus said, kicking Buffy's unmoving ribs and turning to walk off. He'd go join his murder - he really did like that expression - and help them finish off all the others. 

Buffy's eyes sprung open and she jumped to her feet, the second stake in her pocket being pulled out and hurled as hard as she could throw at Angelus' back. He turned at the movement and for a split second she thought it would hit him harmlessly on the shoulder. But he didn't turn fast enough to save himself, and the wood hit his heart straight and true. 

~~~ 

Willow and Xander, or at least the vampire versions of them, had been easy to kill. At the same time they were being taken care of, however, Oz was fighting as well, and proving a much harder adversary. 

He'd evened the odds by breaking Cordelia's arm and knocking Wesley unconscious as soon as possible. With them out of the way, it was simple enough to fight Angel down. It seemed sort of ironic, really, the good human who was once a bad vampire being killed by the bad vampire who was once a good human. 

"I bet it's really pissing you off right now that all your fighting was for nothing." Oz said, preparing to bring the small axe he was holding down on Angel and finish him off. Then, his triumphant look crumbled, literally, and he was nothing but dust and ashes. 

Willow stood just behind where Oz had been, looking down at the pointed weapon in her hands. It rolled out of her limp fingers and clattered against the ground. It began to rain. 

~~~ 

With the threat gone, time ceased to function in the same way. Less a series of images, more a continuous spectrum. Buffy couldn't believe it was over. He was gone. Not dormant under a soul, not in another city. Gone, and she didn't have to trust someone else for the knowledge. Methodically, carefully, Buffy poured the Holy Water over the ground, where it mingled with the first heavy droplets of another storm. Chanted the words, reciting the binding spell with singleminded intensity. 

Then that was finished, and she still couldn't believe it was over. The ground was damp from its impromptu consecration, discolored with strange dust. Buffy stepped out of the small space now bound with magic and closed her eyes, a small sob escaping as she tried to stop shaking. It was over. It didn't feel real. He'd hurt her, and the ones she loved. Tried to end the world. Broken her body and heart. Killed people she cared about. All that was over. Faith had been wrong, this had always been Buffy's fight. She'd killed him. He was gone. Forever and ever, by the grace of God. 

She spat on the ground. "Amen." 

Now it felt finished. 

~~~ 

Faith's face, hair and clothing were coated with thick, sticky blood. Her expression wasn't peaceful in the least, as if she'd raged, raged against the dying of the light to the very last moment. Buffy linked her fingers with Faith's cold ones. The rain was splattering down on them, washing the blood and ashes away so that new things could grow. 

She'd been inside this skin, thanks to one of Faith's many, many attempts to sabotage her life completely. But it was all forgotten, or at least forgiven. 

"Get some, get gone, huh?" Buffy said quietly. "Hope you had fun on your wild ride, F." she squeezed the chilled palm. 

Faintly, so faintly anyone but a Slayer wouldn't have noticed, Faith squeezed back. 

~~~ 

"How is she?" 

Late morning, two days since the final battle. Willow and Buffy were engaged in one of their more surreal pastimes, browsing through the rubble of their former highschool. Willow, who had spoken, was playing with the yellow and maroon strips of a semi-charred cheerleader pompom. 

"Well, if you listen to her, she's fine. I believe her words were the always vague five by five. The doctors say a month and a half, so if you factor in her healing speed, we're talking a week or two." 

"I'm glad she's ok." Willow caught Buffy's expression. "No, really. All right, so I'm not her number one fan. I'm glad she's ok for Lindsey's sake. Nobody deserves to lose somebody they care about." 

Buffy couldn't say anything to that, so she just rubbed Willow's back and kept one arm around her shoulders, a comforting half-hug. 

Still winding the burnt ribbons around her knuckles, a plait of skin and not-quite red and gold, Willow kept talking. 

"Rupert's thinking of going back to England for a year or two. Teaching." 

"Wow." Buffy raised her eyebrows, trying to envisage a Sunnydale without Giles, even if only for twelve months. 

"He wants me to come with him." Willow's voice was soft, her eyes fixed on what her hands were doing. 

Buffy was silent for a moment. "Wow." She managed finally. "Will, is there some Lolita, 'the Graduate', Xander-with-the-bug-lady-revisited thing going on that I've missed?" 

That got a faint smile out of the redhead. "No, there's no thing. I don't think I'll be thinging for a while, I can't risk caring about somebody yet. But there's a possibility of a future thing. And I kind of need that. I can transfer to Oxford, they allowed me to use my acceptance from senior." Willow looked up, trying to keep her brave smile in place. She looked so exhausted, so much older then the girl Buffy had become best friends with. "I need to be some other place for a while." 

"Then I say go, and I hope you have a wonderful time. With tea and crumpets and other englishy treats." 

"Really?" 

"Well, I'll miss you like crazy, of course. But I'll expect an email at least once a week, and phonecalls at all the important holidays. I just want what's best for you." 

Willow rested her head on Buffy's shoulder as they sat in the ruined courtyard, the midday sun a warm reminder of the hope that kept them alive, and a future that might actually involve their scarred hearts healing. 

~~~ 

Faith's body was healing fine. The doctor, who had just done her rounds, was very pleased with the progress. Lindsey, employing every drop of his single-minded lawyer talents, wanted to know what was making his lover so depressed. 

"If she doesn't wish to divulge information given in confidence, then I can't tell you either." The doctor said apologetically, trying to walk away. She had other patients to check on. 

"She's my fiance. I have a right to know." Lindsey grabbed her elbow, holding her in place. 

"No, you don't." she snapped. "Now let me go." 

Lindsey did something then that he hadn't done that often in his life. He relied on somebody else. 

"Please." 

She paused and turned back around. Sometimes being a doctor at Sunnydale general was not unlike being a Slayer, holding back the darkness and fighting the good fight. Too often, though, it was just playing cleanup, no way to fix the damage. 

"I'm telling you this because I don't think she realises how much she needs you right now. Faith had a miscarriage." 

~~~ 

"You know, don't you?" Faith's bed was in the upright position, so she could sit up. She didn't like lying down. Or hospital gowns, hence the black satin pyjamas. 

"Yes." Lindsey nodded. "Were you planning to tell me?" he'd stayed with her since she'd been brought by ambulance, the first person she'd seen when they'd revived her. When she'd been a little stronger, he'd explained what had happened, that he wasn't one of the bad guys. She'd cried a little, although she swore that was from the pain. It hadn't taken her much time to begin demanding stronger drugs, complaining about being fed through a drip because her stomach was injured. She wouldn't have let Lindsey leave if he'd wanted to, but that wasn't important since he didn't want to be anywhere but there. 

Faith shrugged one shoulder. "I didn't know what to say. I didn't even know I was, it must've been just before you... because vampires can't. It was your only chance." she looked away, out the window. The blinds were half-closed, throwing the room into slanted shadows. 

"It doesn't matter." Lindsey sat next to the bed and took her hand in his. "Nothing matters but you being all right." 

"The dagger cut my uterus, so even if I wasn't gonna spend my life with someone who can't have kids, they're not gonna be on the agenda." Faith sounded calm about the whole thing, but Lindsey feared it was just numb apathy. "I never even wanted them until I couldn't. Least I know I'll have the Slayer deal to pass on someday. I'm not totally useless." 

"You never were." 

"Lind?" 

"Yes?" 

"We're gonna be ok, aren't we? Whatever happens?" 

"Whatever crisis comes, we'll face it." he leant over and kissed her beautiful, full lips. They were cool and dry. "Together." 


End file.
